How we check AI answers

Which assistants

For our before-and-after checks of real businesses, we use ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews.

The answers are read from the consumer interface of each service, the website anyone can use. We check Siri, Apple Maps and signed-in Gemini by hand. We report those results separately and say where we asked from. We leave out Perplexity, because its terms of service do not allow collecting information from it, even by hand.

To check your own business, use our free check, or the worksheet for more assistants.

Automatic checks

When automatic checks are switched on, our free check can ask for you. It asks ChatGPT and Google AI Mode 6 questions that a local customer might ask. We build them from your type of business and your town, and they do not name your business, so the answers show who gets recommended.

The answers are read from the consumer interface of each service, as a customer in the country you choose. An answer names you when it contains your business name. It links to you when one of its sources is on your website.

An answer with no text, or one we could not collect, is counted apart and never as not naming you. We keep the answers for 7 days, then delete them. One check is one set of answers on one day, so it is not a score.

What we ask

We ask what a customer would type or say, for one type of business in one town. For example: “Who is the best plumber in Dayton, Ohio?” The worksheet has the full set. Our free check shows its own questions before it asks them. We do not add instructions that a customer would not use.

How we ask

For each question in our before-and-after checks, we:

• start a new session
• stay signed out and ask from the US, except in our checks by hand
• name the town
• ask it on at least 3 different days before we report a pattern

What we record

For each answer in our before-and-after checks:

• the date, the time and the assistant
• the exact question
• the full answer, and the page as the assistant showed it
• every business it names, in order
• whether the business’s name, address, phone, hours and services are right
• the sources the answer cites

What a check cannot show

A check shows what one assistant said on one day. It cannot show why it picked one business over another, and we do not claim it does. When a detail is wrong, we try to trace it to a listing or a web page. When we cannot, we say so.

Before-and-after checks

First we check a business before it changes anything. Then the owner fixes their listings using our guide. Then we check again with the same questions. The owner agrees in writing to be checked and named. We publish the full record, even if nothing improves.