If someone asked ChatGPT about your business today, what would it say?
That could happen after a referral, after someone sees your name online or while they’re deciding whether to contact you. The answer may include your services, location, reviews, website or other information about your business.
So where is ChatGPT getting that information?
There isn’t one profile or source behind the answer. AI tools like ChatGPT look across information that already exists online, including your Google Business Profile, website, reviews, business listings and public social media content, to understand and answer questions about your business.
The question is whether the information they find gives someone a clear and accurate picture of your business.
What Happens When Someone Asks ChatGPT About Your Business?
When someone asks ChatGPT about your business, it will search the internet to find current information before building its answer. OpenAI explains that ChatGPT may look at several sources to help answer a question, and it can also use general location information when the search is local.
That matters when someone asks a question like: “Tell me about Jane Smith, a real estate agent in Scottsdale, Arizona”
ChatGPT first has to figure out which Jane Smith the person means, whether she’s actually a real estate agent in Scottsdale and what information is available about her business.
The same thing applies if someone asks about a chiropractor, attorney, mortgage broker, contractor or any other local business.
There isn’t a business profile inside ChatGPT with all of that information already filled in. It looks for current information that already exists online and uses what it finds to build its answer.
This Is Bigger Than ChatGPT
ChatGPT gets a lot of attention, but you shouldn’t build your entire AI visibility strategy around one platform. While one potential client may use ChatGPT to research you. Someone else may use Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity or another AI tool.
Those platforms don’t all work exactly the same way, and they don’t necessarily rely on the same sources.
What they have in common is that they need information to work with. They’re trying to answer basic questions about a business:
- Who is this?
- What do they do?
- Where do they work?
- What services do they offer?
- What do customers say about them?
That information already exists in different places online. This is why we don’t recommend thinking about “ChatGPT optimization” as a completely separate marketing tactic.
The better goal is to make sure the information already available about your business is clear, accurate and credible wherever a search engine or AI tool may find it.
What Sources Are AI Tools Actually Using?
That’s a question everyone in our industry is asking right now. There isn’t a public formula that tells us exactly which source an AI tool will use every time someone searches for a local business.
But research is starting to give us a better picture of the sources showing up most often. A recent study looked at more than 60,000 local searches across several AI platforms.
What stood out wasn’t one secret website or directory that every AI tool relied on. It was how many different sources were involved.
Google Business Profiles were the most commonly used source in the study, making up nearly 30% of the sources AI tools used. But the mix changed depending on the platform. The study also found information coming from hundreds of business directories and individual business websites.
That doesn’t mean you need to race out and create a profile on every directory you can find. It means there isn’t one place you can optimize and consider your AI visibility handled. That’s where having a trusted expert who can keep their pulse on the ever changing search landscape comes in handy.
While one search may pull information from Google, another may rely more on a review site, business directory or other source. The important thing is that wherever an AI tool finds your business, the information is accurate and consistent.
Your Google Business Profile Is an Important Part of That Picture
Your Google Business Profile is one of the clearest places online to establish information about your business.
It can include your business name, category, service area or address, phone number, website, services, hours, photos and customer reviews.
Google says its local business information can combine information supplied by the business owner with information from the business’s website, licensed third-party sources and user contributions such as reviews and photos.
That’s important because it shows how business information already works across the web.
Your Google Business Profile isn’t an isolated page. It’s one part of a larger picture that helps platforms understand who you are and what your business does.
Google has also become more explicit about the connection between Business Profiles and AI search. Its current guidance says keeping Business Profile information up to date can help a business’s products and services appear in its generative AI experiences as well as traditional Google Search results.
So keeping your Google Business Profile complete and accurate matters beyond Google Maps.
Your Google Business Profile Doesn’t Work Alone
Your Google Business Profile is important, but it’s only one part of your online brand presence. Your business listings, website and reviews each add something different to the picture of your business online.
Business Listings Help Reinforce Who You Are
Business listings put information about your business in other established places online. That may include your business name, phone number, website, address or service area, business category and other identifying details.
The goal isn’t simply to be listed in as many places as possible. It’s to make sure credible and relevant sources have accurate information about your business.
When that information is distributed and kept accurate across multiple directories, it gives search engines and AI tools more places to find the same consistent details about your business.
This becomes especially important when something changes. If you move, change your phone number, update your website or adjust your business name, outdated information can continue living online.
When established sources reflect the same current information, they help reinforce the basic facts about your business.
Your Website Adds More Context
Business profiles and listings are good at communicating facts. Your website can explain what those facts actually mean.
A profile might establish that a real estate agent works in a particular market. Their website can explain which communities they know especially well, the types of buyers and sellers they work with and the experience they bring to those situations.
A chiropractor’s profile may list a particular service. Their website can explain who that service is for, how they approach it and answer the questions patients commonly have.
OpenAI says public websites can appear in ChatGPT Search when its search crawler can access them.
That’s another reason your website needs to clearly explain who you are, what you do, where you work and what you want your business to be known for.
We take a deeper look at the role your website can play in AI search here.
Reviews Add Another Perspective
Reviews bring in something your own profiles and website can’t provide: someone else’s experience with your business.
A review that says “Great job” is positive. A review that explains what the customer needed, how you helped and what stood out about the experience gives much more context.
Over time, those reviews can help reinforce the services, experience and qualities your business is known for. If you want a closer look at how reviews shape what people, Google and AI tools can learn about your business, read our blog.
What Happens When Those Sources Don’t Agree?
Imagine someone is referred to a business and asks ChatGPT or Claude (or any AI tool) to tell them more about it.
The Google Business Profile lists one service area. The website mainly talks about another. A few business listings still point to an old website. None of those issues may seem significant on their own. Together, though, they make it harder for AI to know which information about the business is current and accurate.
That doesn’t mean every sentence about your business needs to be identical everywhere. Your website should contain much more detail than a directory listing. Your reviews will naturally use completely different language.
What needs to align are the underlying facts. Who are you? What do you do? Where do you work? How can someone contact you? What services or areas of expertise are important to the business today?
The clearer those answers are across the web, the easier it is for people, Google and AI tools to understand your business accurately.
Why AI Results Can Look Different
Different AI tools may use different sources, and the answer can also change based on how someone asks the question and where they’re located. Searching for your business by name may bring back something different than asking for a recommendation based on a specific service or need. And for local searches, someone in a different city or area may see different results.
That’s why one search isn’t a permanent score. Think of it as a snapshot of what that tool found for that particular person, question and location.
Try Looking Up Your Own Business
One simple way to understand this is to see what happens with your own business.
Open ChatGPT while you’re logged out, then try: “Tell me about [Your Name or Business Name], [Industry] in [City, State].”
Searching while logged out removes your own ChatGPT account history and memory from the equation. Location and other factors can still influence what appears, so this won’t recreate exactly what every other person will see.
Look at the result with a few questions in mind:
- Did it identify the right business?
- Is the location correct?
- Does it understand what you actually do?
- Are your reviews, website or other business details showing up?
- If sources are shown, where is the information coming from?
- Is anything important missing or outdated?
The is to understand whether someone researching your business is finding a clear and accurate picture of you.
What Can You Actually Do About It?
You can’t choose every source ChatGPT will use or control exactly what an AI tool will say the next time someone asks about your business.
What you can influence is the information available for it to find.
Keep your Google Business Profile accurate and complete. Make sure important business listings reflect current information. Use your website to clearly explain what you do, where you work and what you’re known for, and built in a technical way that AI can read. Continue earning genuine reviews that reflect the experiences people are having today.
Most importantly, don’t think about those pieces separately.
A strong Google Business Profile is more useful when the website supports what it says. Your website is stronger when reputable business listings reinforce the business behind it. Reviews add real-world evidence to the claims you’re making about your services and customer experience.
Together, those pieces give search engines and AI tools clearer information to work with as they try to understand your business.
The Bottom Line
There isn’t one database ChatGPT checks when someone asks about your business. It uses information that already exists. That’s why asking “Which source does ChatGPT use?” will rarely have one simple answer.
A more useful question is: “If ChatGPT or another AI tool goes looking for information about my business, what will it find?”
Your Google Business Profile, business listings, website and reviews all contribute to that answer.
The goal isn’t to build a separate online brand presence just for AI. It’s to make the online brand presence you already have clearer, more accurate and more representative of the business you want people to find.
That gives Google and AI tools clearer information to work with, and it gives the person doing the research a more accurate picture of who you are, what you do and why they may want to choose you.
