You finally ask ChatGPT about your own business.
It gives the hours you changed two years ago. It lists a service you stopped offering. It reads out a phone number you stopped using years ago.
Now picture a customer asking the same question. They get the same answer, and they have no reason to doubt it.
That’s not a someday problem, it’s happening now. BrightLocal found 45% of consumers use ChatGPT or a similar tool for local recommendations, as Search Engine Journal reported in July 2026. The answer they get is the only version of your business they see.
You can’t edit ChatGPT’s answer directly. You can fix what it reads.
Key Takeaways
Errors are common. In vendor tests reported by Search Engine Journal, 93% of 165 London businesses had at least one basic fact wrong or missing across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
Find out where the answer came from. A wrong answer with sources means a wrong source. A wrong answer with no sources came from the AI's training data.
Your website matters most. In BrightLocal's 2026 study of about 1.9 million AI citations for local businesses, business websites were the biggest source at 42%.
There's no correction form. OpenAI doesn't offer a way to edit facts about your business. Feedback buttons don't change published sources.
Check more than once. BrightLocal found ChatGPT's answers to the same local search overlapped only 23% from run to run.
Why ChatGPT Gets Your Business Wrong
There are two reasons, and the fix depends on which one you’re dealing with.
1. It searched the web and found old or conflicting details. ChatGPT search looks things up through third-party search providers, according to OpenAI’s help center. If your website says one set of hours, your Yelp page says another and an old directory listing says a third, it can pick the wrong one.
2. It answered from memory without searching. ChatGPT, like any large language model (LLM), learns from text collected up to a cutoff date. When it answers without searching, it’s working from that snapshot, which can be months or years old.
To tell which one you’re looking at, check whether the answer shows sources. Sources mean you can see exactly where the wrong detail came from. No sources means the model filled the gap from memory, and the fix is making sure the correct details are everywhere it would look next time.
Smaller businesses get hit harder. In the same vendor tests reported by Search Engine Journal, half of smaller London businesses had a false fact in AI answers, against 32% of larger ones. Wrong postcodes were the most common error. Those numbers come from Searchable, a company that sells AI visibility software, so read them as a warning sign, not a precise rate.
Where AI Gets Your Business Details
OpenAI doesn’t publish which data providers ChatGPT uses for local results. Its help center says ChatGPT may share a user’s location with “trusted third-party providers” to find nearby business listings, without naming them.
What we can measure is what AI tools cite. BrightLocal analyzed about 1.9 million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews for about 1,300 business locations, published in September 2026:
| Source | Share of AI citations | Who leans on it | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your website | 42% | ChatGPT and Google's AI. Websites were 58% of ChatGPT's local sources in BrightLocal's 2024 test | Hours, phone, address and services in plain text on your contact and service pages |
| Google Business Profile | 28.5% | Mostly Google's AI. BrightLocal says ChatGPT barely uses it | Hours, special hours, services, categories and attributes |
| Yelp | 9.5% | All three | Hours, phone, website link and services |
| 2.2% | Not broken out by tool | The About section and hours | |
| Tripadvisor, OpenTable, Angi, BBB and other directories | Under 2% each | Depends on your industry | Whichever ones show up in your sources |
Your own website is the single biggest source, so it’s the first place a wrong detail should be fixed. And ChatGPT and Google’s AI don’t read the same places, so fixing your Google Business Profile alone won’t fix ChatGPT.
You’ll see claims that one directory, like Foursquare or Bing Places, “powers” ChatGPT’s local answers. OpenAI hasn’t confirmed any of them, and the tests behind them contradict each other. Fix the sources ChatGPT actually cites for your business, not the ones a blog says it uses.
How To Check What ChatGPT Says About You (10 Minutes)
- Open a logged-out browser window. Your own chat history can change what you see.
- Make sure search is on, so ChatGPT looks things up and shows sources.
- Paste in the five prompts below. Swap in your details.
- Click the sources on any wrong answer. Write down which website or listing it came from.
- Ask the same questions in Gemini, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot. They read different sources.
- Run each question twice. Answers change from one run to the next.
Paste These Five Questions Into ChatGPT, Gemini And AI Mode
Save every answer and every source link in one sheet. That sheet becomes your fix list, and you'll rerun the same five questions after you've made the fixes.
If you want a wider check, Step 7 of our local SEO audit has three more questions that show whether AI recommends you at all.
Before You Build the Dashboard, Run the 15-Minute Check
The AI Visibility Playbook is a 15-minute check you run yourself in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It shows you what AI says about your business and where it gets that from, so you know what to fix before anyone sells you a fix.
Get the AI Visibility PlaybookHow To Fix Wrong Information, Source By Source
Work through these in order. The first ones fix the most answers.
1. Your Website
This is the source AI cites most, and the only one you fully control.
- Put your hours, phone number and address in plain text on your contact page and in your footer. Not only inside an image, a map embed or a booking widget that a crawler can’t read.
- Give every service you offer its own clear mention, and take down pages for services you’ve dropped. If an old service page still gets traffic, redirect it to the closest current one.
- Add LocalBusiness schema markup (structured data, the code that tells search engines your business name, address, hours and phone). It has to match what’s on the page.
- Verify the page the same day anything changes. New hours, a new phone system, a new location.
2. Google Business Profile
Your Business Profile matters most for Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode in search results. Check hours, special and holiday hours, services, categories and attributes. If you haven’t looked at it in a while, our guide to the benefits of Google Business Profile covers what to fill in.
3. Yelp And Facebook
Both get cited by ChatGPT and Google’s AI. Claim them if you haven’t, then match every detail to your website exactly. Same phone format, same hours, same business name.
4. The Directories AI Actually Cites For You
Go back to the sources you wrote down. If ChatGPT pulled your hours from an industry directory or an old chamber of commerce listing, that’s the next one to fix. Claim it and update it, or ask the site to.
5. Old Mentions You Don't Control
Old press articles, partner pages and supplier listings can carry an old phone number or a service you’ve dropped. Email the publisher with the correction. Start with the ones ChatGPT actually cited.
6. Then Tell ChatGPT
Use the thumbs-down button under the wrong answer and explain what’s wrong. Do this last, because it doesn’t change the answer for anyone else right away.
OpenAI’s formal report form is for content that may break its terms or the law, not routine corrections. OpenAI’s help center says its Model Quality team may review reported domains and stop ChatGPT relying on unreliable sources. If a site is publishing false information about your business, that’s the route. A stale listing is a job for steps 1 to 5.
Fix the source, not the chatbot. A thumbs-down doesn't change what Yelp, a directory or your own contact page says, and those are what ChatGPT reads next time. In our experience the business that gets misrepresented is usually the one whose own website is vague, not the one with a bad Yelp listing. Start with your site.
How Long Fixes Take To Show Up
There’s no published timeline, and anyone who gives you one is guessing.
If ChatGPT searched the web for its answer, it can pick up a corrected page once the page is crawled again. If it answered from memory, the old detail can stick around until the model is updated.
So don’t judge it on one check. Rerun the same five questions once a month, in each AI tool, and keep the answers in the same sheet. That’s how you’ll see whether the fixes are working.
Stop It Happening Again
- Pick one source of truth. When your hours, phone number or services change, update your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp and Facebook on the same day.
- Set holiday hours ahead of time everywhere they’re listed.
- Rerun the five questions every quarter, even when nothing has changed. Answers drift.
- Track your Google AI visibility too. Our guide to AI Overview tracking covers the free Search Console report.
Fix What AI Reads, And The Answers Follow
You can’t log in to ChatGPT and correct your business. You can make sure every place it reads has the same accurate information, starting with your own website. That consistency is the most basic part of generative engine optimization (GEO): getting AI tools to describe and recommend your business correctly.
Do the 10-minute check, fix the sources it cited, and check again next month. For the bigger picture on how AI is changing local search, see our local AI search statistics.
Frequently Asked Questions
Either it searched the web and found an old or conflicting source, or it answered from its training data without searching. Check whether the answer shows sources. If it does, the wrong detail came from one of them.
Not directly. OpenAI doesn’t offer a form for correcting incorrect information about a business. You can leave feedback with the thumbs-down button, and its report form covers content that may break its terms or the law. The reliable fix is correcting the sources ChatGPT reads.
OpenAI doesn’t publish a timeline. Answers based on a web search can change once the corrected page is crawled again. Answers from training data can take until the next model update. Recheck monthly.
Not much, according to BrightLocal’s 2026 study, which found Google’s own AI tools rely on Business Profiles heavily while ChatGPT barely uses them. Keep your profile accurate for Google, and fix your website, Yelp and Facebook for ChatGPT.
Yes. A wrong phone number or the wrong hours sends a customer somewhere else, and they may never know the information was wrong. That’s why the hours, phone number and “are you still open” questions are the first ones to check.
Not exactly. BrightLocal found Google’s AI tools lean heavily on Google Business Profile, while ChatGPT leans more on websites and directories. Check each tool separately.
Want Us To Fix What AI Says About Your Business?
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