How do I know if ChatGPT recommends my company?
Ask it what a buyer who does not know you would ask, with web search on, and see whether it names you. The key is that the question leaves your name out: if it includes it, ChatGPT nearly always names you, and that says nothing about whether it would recommend you to someone new.
To do it by hand:
- Open ChatGPT logged out or with memory turned off, so it does not use what it already knows about you.
- Turn on web search. The answer changes a lot with it, and it is how people ask when they are looking for a supplier.
- Ask several buyer questions in your customers' language: “which hotel refurbishment company would you recommend in Madrid”, “alternatives to your competitor”, “how much does what you sell cost”.
- For each answer, note whether you appear, in which position, whom it names and which pages it cites.
- Ask the same questions again another day. One appearance is not a trend yet.
If you would rather not do it by hand, run the free scanner, which runs 12 checks on whether an AI can read your home page and asks ChatGPT, with web search, 3 buyer questions that leave your company's name out. It is free and needs no sign-up.
What does not work is asking ChatGPT “do you know my company?”. It will tell you something, but it is not what your buyer sees.
What do my customers ask ChatGPT about my industry?
You cannot see it directly: OpenAI does not publish what its users ask, so you build the list from what you already know about your buyers. It helps to start from five kinds of question, the ones people ask when they compare before buying:
- Category: “which tool checks whether AI assistants name my brand”, “industrial maintenance companies in Leeds”.
- Problem: “why am I not getting leads from Google”, “how do I cut returns”.
- Comparison: “alternatives to a well-known brand”, “A or B for a small business”.
- Price: “how much does it cost”, “is there one with a free trial”.
- Requirement: “in Spanish”, “for agencies with several clients”, “GDPR compliant”.
To write them, look at the questions you get on a first sales call, customer emails, comparisons in your field and the long searches that reach you in Google Search Console: the ones phrased as questions look a lot like what people type into an AI.
An example from our own list: for PolarJay we wrote 40 questions, 26 category questions (they do not name us) and 14 brand questions (they do). Two of the category ones: “Tool to track brand mentions in AI answers in Spanish” and “Is there a GEO tool made in Spain?”. They are all in the study, with what ChatGPT and Claude answered.
Write them the way your buyer talks, not as keywords. And in each language: a question in English does not tell you how an AI sees you when people ask in Spanish.
How do I compare my AI visibility with my competitors'?
Use the same questions, the same AIs and the same day, and count whom each answer names. That keeps the comparison fair: the company changes, the question does not. In each answer, write down every name that comes up, not just yours. That gives you three things:
- How many answers each competitor appears in: its presence.
- Where each one sits when the answer is a list.
- Which sources the AI cites when it names a competitor and not you. That is where the work is.
The third is the most useful. If the AI names a competitor because a comparison on an industry blog cites it, you know which page needs to name you too. In our measurement on 23 October 2026, otterly.ai was the most-read source in category questions (19 answers) and OtterlyAI the most-named brand: the most-read website belonged to the most-named brand.
Compare by AI and by language, never added up: a company can show up a lot in Claude and not at all in ChatGPT. In Spanish, the brand ChatGPT named most was OtterlyAI (7 of 26 answers) and the one Claude named most was HubSpot AEO Grader (13 of 26).
How do you measure share of voice in AI answers?
Share of voice in AI is the part of all the mentions in your category that goes to your brand: your mentions divided by the mentions of every brand, over the same set of questions and answers.
The formula: share of voice = your brand's mentions ÷ all brands' mentions × 100. Count one mention per brand per answer, even if the answer names it three times.
Example numbers
You ask an AI 20 questions. Across all the answers there are 80 brand mentions. Your company appears in 8 answers. Your share of voice is 8 ÷ 80, or 10%. Your presence is 8 of 20 answers, or 40%.
They are two different numbers and both are worth watching. Presence tells you whether you show up; share of voice, how much weight you carry against the rest. If answers start naming more brands, your share of voice drops even if your presence stays the same.
With real data: in our measurement on 23 October 2026, OtterlyAI came up in 31 of the 104 category answers, a presence of 30%. PolarJay came up in 0.
Two things to watch. Split the numbers by AI and by language. And count a brand written several ways as one: Otterly, OtterlyAI and otterly.ai are the same. We group them by domain, ignoring the country ending (hubspot.es and hubspot.com count as one).
How many questions do you need to track to know if an AI recommends you?
At least 25 or so category questions per language: with 10, a single answer changing moves your presence 10 points; with 26, about 4. There is no official number, it depends on how many things you sell and in how many languages, but with only a few questions the figure moves too much to conclude anything. A single question is an anecdote, not a measurement.
We measure PolarJay with 40 questions, 26 category and 14 brand questions, in Spanish and English, on ChatGPT and Claude with web search: 160 answers per measurement. The category questions tell you whether you are recommended; the brand ones, whether the AI knows who you are.
To choose yours: at least one question of each kind (category, problem, comparison, price and requirement) for each product or service you want to sell, and in each of your customers' languages. And repeat them: how often you ask counts as much as how many questions you ask.
How often do AI answers about a brand change?
A lot, and within days. We asked ChatGPT and Claude, both with web search, the same 26 category questions on 11 October 2026 and 23 October 2026: in 71 of the 104 answers the list of tools they recommended had changed, and only 47% of the tools from the first day were still there on the second.
There are several reasons: models get updated, web search brings back different pages each time, and the model never answers the same way twice. On top of that, a new website takes time to get into the index the AI draws on: on 11 October 2026, polarjay.com was not among the sources of any ChatGPT answer; on 23 October 2026, it was in 27 of 80, all of them questions that already named PolarJay. Claude did not read it on either day.
That is why you measure at a fixed interval and look at the trend, not the day. PolarJay repeats the same questions every week and alerts you when something changes.
What does it mean if an AI only mentions me when the question names me?
It means the AI knows you but does not connect you with what you sell: it knows who you are if you give it your name, and does not think of you when someone asks about your category. It happens a lot to companies with a good brand and little presence in the sources the AI reads.
We saw it in a real measurement on 4 October 2026 of a hotel construction company. Claude with web search named it in 2 of 40 buyer questions, and only when the question included its name.
The same is true of PolarJay today. On 23 October 2026, ChatGPT identified PolarJay in all 28 questions that named it, and named it in 0 of the 52 category questions.
What to do:
- Make your home page and main pages state your category in the words of the question, not just your tagline.
- Have a page that answers each important category question, with the answer up front.
- Get named on the pages the AI reads for those questions: comparisons, directories and guides in your field.
- Measure the same questions again to see whether it changes.
The usual causes, one by one, are in the guide to why ChatGPT doesn't mention your company.