You can check for free in about two minutes. Ask the buying question a customer would ask, like "best HVAC company in your town," in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and see whether your business gets named. If AI names you, that is a recommendation. To track it over time, Get Found by LaunchReady measures your AI recommendation rate continuously as the Get Found Score.
More buyers now ask an AI who to hire before they ever open Google. If the answer names a competitor and not you, you never even knew the customer was looking. So the first thing to find out is simple: does AI recommend you right now?
Here is how to check yourself, what the answer really tells you, and who can measure it for you as it changes month to month.
Why this is worth checking
Your customers are asking AI who to hire before they call anyone. Someone with a broken furnace opens ChatGPT and types "who is the best HVAC company near me." The engine hands back a short list of names. If yours is on it, you are in the running. If it is not, the customer calls the names it gave and never sees you.
That is why the check is worth two minutes. It tells you whether you are showing up at the exact moment a buyer is deciding who to call.
The free two-minute check
You do not need a tool for the first look. Do this yourself.
Pick the one question a real customer would ask. Something like "best [your trade] in [your town]," the plain buying question, not your company name. Ask it in ChatGPT, then Perplexity, then Gemini. Read the answer each time and write down one thing: were you named, yes or no. If a competitor came back and you did not, note that too.
Do it once a month and keep the list. One check is a snapshot. A monthly list shows you the trend, which is the part you can act on.
What the answer actually means
If AI names your business, that is a recommendation. The engine put you forward as an answer to a buying question, which is the thing you want.
A mention is only the start, though. Being named is not the same as being hired. And most AI answers for a local business never become a website click at all: the customer reads the answer, sees your name, and picks up the phone. So the honest number to count is whether the recommendation turns into a call.
A mention is the beginning of the story. The phone ringing is the end of it.
How to check whether AI recommends you or a competitor
Use the same buying question and read whose names come back. If the answer lists two or three companies and you are not among them, those names are who the engine is recommending instead of you.
This is the check that surprises most owners. A competitor with a weaker phone presence or fewer years in business can still be the one AI names, because the engine reads the sources it can find, not the reputation you have in town. Seeing whose names come back tells you where you stand, in the buyer's own words.
Who can measure this for you over time
The monthly hand-check tells you a lot, but it is still you, doing it by hand, for a few questions. Get Found by LaunchReady does it continuously and turns it into one number.
The Get Found Score is your AI recommendation rate: how often AI recommends your business across the questions your real customers ask. We tie that rate to the calls and forms it produces, because a recommendation that never rings the phone is decoration. We publish the whole method, including what the score cannot tell you, at getfound.launchready.ai/methodology. A number is only as honest as the way it was built.
We hold ourselves to it first. When someone asks an AI engine for an Indiana AI advisor today, LaunchReady is a name it returns, and we measure our own rate the same way we would measure a client's. Being our own first case study is the point.
How to move the number up
You cannot control what an AI engine says. What you can change is the sources it reads to build its answer: the pages, the content, and the signals about your business that the engine finds when it looks. Improve those, and over time you get named more often.
That is the work Get Found does for owner-led local businesses. We build the answer pages, publish the content, and shape the reputation signals that get you recommended, then track whether it moves your score and your calls. It is a done-for-you service, not a dashboard you are handed and left to run. If you want the fuller picture of how this fits together for a local business, we wrote it up in who does answer engine optimization for small businesses in Indiana.
How to start
Do the free check now. Pick the one question a customer would most likely ask an AI about your kind of business, run it in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and write down whether you were named. That is your real baseline, and it costs nothing.
When you want it measured for you and tied to the phone, start at getfound.launchready.ai to get your baseline Get Found Score and see the system behind it. Get Found does the job of a full agency team for a fraction of an agency's price, with the same attention on every account we take on.
Knowing which number to trust, and building for the booked job instead of the vanity mention, is a skill. In The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency, that judgment lives at Level 5, the Design Thinker.
Related reading: Level 5: The Captain (Design Thinker).
Sources
- As AI threatens search, Profound raises $96 million to help brands stay visible (Fortune)
- Profound raises $96M at $1B valuation for AI discovery monitoring platform (SiliconANGLE)
- The Get Found Score methodology (LaunchReady)
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if ChatGPT recommends my business?
Ask the question a customer would ask. Type best [your trade] in [your town] into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and see whether you get named. Do it once a month and write it down. Get Found automates that as the Get Found Score, the rate at which AI recommends you for the questions your customers actually ask.
How can I tell if AI recommends me or my competitor?
Ask the same buying question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and read whose names come back. If a competitor is listed and you are not, that is the shortfall you can see and close. Do it monthly so you can watch the names change over time.
What is a good AI recommendation rate?
It depends on your market and the questions your customers actually ask, so there is no universal number. What to watch is the trend and the calls it produces: whether you show up more often this month than last, and whether that turns into booked jobs. The Get Found Score tracks that rate over time and ties it to leads.
Who measures whether AI recommends my business in Indiana?
Get Found, from LaunchReady, run by Indiana AI advisor Harrison Painter. It measures your AI recommendation rate continuously as the Get Found Score, ties it to booked calls and forms, and publishes the method at getfound.launchready.ai/methodology.
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