Ask the AIs the questions a customer would ask
Start with the simplest test there is. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, one at a time, and type the questions a customer in your area would actually type. Use your real city or neighborhood. Then read the answer like a customer, not like the owner.
Type questions like these, swapping in your category and location:
- best [category] in [city]
- good [category] near [neighborhood]
- is [your business name] any good
- a [category] near [neighborhood] that is open late
- who should I call for [the specific thing you do] in [city]
- [category] in [city] that takes [insurance, walk-ins, last-minute bookings, or whatever applies to you]
Read the answer for three things
When the AI replies, you are checking three simple things. First, are you named at all. If the AI lists five places and you are not one of them, that is your answer, and it is the most important thing you can learn for free.
Second, are your facts right. Look at what it says about your hours, your services, your location, your prices, and whether it thinks you are open or closed. AI assistants state wrong facts with the same confidence as right ones, so read carefully. A wrong 'permanently closed' or the wrong phone number quietly sends customers away.
Third, who gets named instead of you. The competitors the AI recommends are doing something you can see and copy: more reviews, a complete profile, a clearer description of what they do. Write their names down. They are your free benchmark.
Run each question more than once
Do not trust a single answer. AI assistants do not give the same reply every time. Ask the same question two or three times, in fresh chats, and you will often get a slightly different list. Sometimes you are named, sometimes you are not.
That variation is the real picture. If you show up in one run out of three, you are on the edge, present but easy to miss. If you never show up across several runs, you have a real gap. Running each question a few times turns one lucky or unlucky answer into something you can actually rely on.
Check Google AI Overviews
Google now puts an AI-written summary at the top of many searches, called AI Overviews. It is its own surface, separate from ChatGPT, and a lot of customers see it without ever clicking a link.
To check it, just search Google for your category in your city, the same way a customer would. If an AI summary appears at the top, read who it names and what it says. This one is built heavily on Google's own data about local businesses, so if your Google listing is thin, you will usually see the gap show up here first.
Check the sources the AIs read, all for free
The AIs are not making up their answers. They read public sources and summarize them. You can open the same sources yourself and see what they see. This is where most fixable problems hide.
Go through these by hand:
- Your Google Business Profile: is it claimed, and is every field complete and correct. Name, address, phone, hours, category, photos, and a plain description of what you do.
- Your reviews: how many do you have, how recent are they, and what do they actually say. A profile with a handful of old reviews reads as inactive to both customers and AI.
- Your name, address, phone and hours across the web: check that they match everywhere they appear, including your own website, directories, and social pages. When these disagree, the AI cannot tell which version is true.
- Your own website: does it clearly state what you do, where you are, and who you serve, in normal words a person and a machine can both read.
Free tiers of paid tools, honestly
Some paid visibility tools offer a free tier or a trial. They can be useful, but be realistic about the limits. Free tiers usually cap how many queries you can run, hide the detail behind an upgrade, and push you toward a monthly subscription you may not need.
For a single business, the manual checks above tell you almost everything a free tier would, without the signup or the upsell. Reach for a tool's free tier only if you want a second opinion, and treat the locked parts as marketing, not as a missing piece you have to buy.
Where LocalFox fits, if you want a shortcut
Everything on this page is free and you can do all of it yourself. The only thing you are spending is time, mostly on the asking and re-asking and reading.
If you would rather not, LocalFox has a free check that does the 'ask the AIs and score it' step for you in about two minutes. Type your business name and city, no account, and you get an AI-visibility score and your single biggest problem. The $9 report is the optional done-for-you version: it runs the questions across the assistants, samples each one several times, shows you the AI's actual words including anything it gets wrong, explains why competitors get named, and gives you a fix list. It is the same work you can do by hand, packaged. Use it if you want it, skip it if you don't.
What to do with what you find
Once you have looked, you will land in one of a few places, and each has a clear next step.
If you are not named, start with your Google Business Profile and your reviews, because those are the sources the AIs lean on most and the ones you control. Claim the profile, complete every field, and ask recent happy customers for honest reviews in their own words.
If you are named but the facts are wrong, fix them at the source. Correct your hours, phone, and services on your Google profile and your website, and clean up any old listings that still show the wrong details. The AI will catch up as those sources update.
If a competitor keeps getting named instead of you, go look at why. Usually it is more reviews and a fuller, clearer profile. You cannot fake this, and you should not try. You can match it by doing the real work they did. Then come back in a few weeks and run the same questions again to see whether the picture has changed.