How to check what ChatGPT and Google’s AI say about your business

Why ChatGPT and Google’s AI get business details wrong

When a customer asks an AI assistant for a business like yours, it answers with a name, and with a number and hours it found somewhere. As the Four Digital Doors overview explains, it reads those details from the same doors your customers use.

An old number or wrong hours from an assistant can send a customer to a dead line or a locked door. The customer may never look at your listing, so you may never hear about it.

A wrong detail often starts somewhere the assistant can read. It may be your own Google listing or website, an old webpage, a directory, or a listing about a business with a similar name. Google itself says its AI Overviews, the AI summaries it shows above its search results, “can and will make mistakes”. OpenAI says ChatGPT’s search results and citations “can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect”.

Search Engine Roundtable reported on 17 September 2026 that Google is testing an AI summary inside the business panel. That is the box that shows when someone searches your business name. That means an AI summary may one day sit on your own business panel. The report did not say where the test is running or when it might spread.

The studies we found of how often assistants get business details wrong all measured US businesses, and none measured Bahamian businesses. In July 2026, Insites, a UK company that sells website audits to agencies and media companies, published a study of 10,000 US local businesses. It compared what ChatGPT and Perplexity, another AI assistant, said about each one with its Google listing. Only about half matched in full, and a wrong phone number was the most common error. Insites says some of those mismatches may be an out-of-date Google listing rather than an AI mistake, which is one more reason to start with your own listing. In September 2026, Herringbone Digital, a digital-marketing group, graded assistant answers about 600 US small businesses. When a business’s website was vague about a detail, Google’s AI stated specifics as fact 8 times in 10 without saying where they came from. Usually they came from directory listings. Some of the wrong details came from the business itself. Of 59 businesses with no hours on their website, 46 had set their Google listing to “Open 24 hours”, and the assistants repeated it.

So check the phone number and the hours first. Start with your own listing and website, because a gap or a wrong detail there is what other sources fill or repeat.

Step 1: Write down what is true about your business

Before you ask any assistant anything, write one line for each of these:

• The name on your sign.
• Your main phone number, and any second number with what it is for.
• Your opening hours, including the days you close.
• Your address, or the area you serve.
• What you do, in the words a customer would use.

This is what you will check every answer against. Your details may already differ between Google, Facebook and your website. If so, the piece on phone numbers that differ between Google and Facebook has a sheet for comparing them door by door.

Step 2: Ask ChatGPT and Google what they say about your business

Start with Google and ChatGPT. Google lists The Bahamas among the countries where both its AI Overviews and its AI Mode, Google’s chat-style search, are available. OpenAI lists The Bahamas among the places where ChatGPT is supported.

Ask two kinds of question.

• By name and place: “What are the opening hours and phone number for [your business] in Nassau?”
• The way a customer would: “Where can I get my car’s AC fixed in Freeport on a Saturday?”

Ask each question in a new chat, then ask it again in different words. Answers can change from one try to the next, so check more than one. Take a screenshot of each answer, note the date, and note any sources the assistant lists under it.

Step 3: Mark which wrong details matter

Go through each answer against your list. These are the details that cost you customers, most serious first:

1. The phone number. Dial the number the assistant gave, from your own phone. A dead line or someone else’s number loses the call.
2. Open or closed, and the hours. Check the days as well as the times.
3. The address or the area you serve.
4. What you do. A caterer described as a restaurant will get people turning up to eat.
5. Whether it is your business at all. An assistant can mix you up with a business that has a similar name.

A small difference in how a detail is written, such as brackets around the area code, does not matter to a customer.

If an assistant does not mention your business at all when you ask the customer question, that is a different problem from a wrong detail. What an AI assistant reads before it recommends a business covers that side.

Step 4: Find where the wrong detail comes from

Open every source the answer lists. Then search your business name together with the wrong detail, such as your old number or the wrong hours. The listing or webpage that still shows it may come up.

Look at what you control first, because it is the easiest to fix:

• Your Google listing. Look for an old number, hours set to “Open 24 hours”, hours you never filled in, or a listing marked closed.
• Your website. Check the header, the footer, the contact webpage, and any old webpages that are still online.
• Your Facebook Page. Check the About section and the contact details.
• Your WhatsApp Business profile. Check the hours and the address in the app.

Then look at webpages other people control, such as directories (Yelp, Tripadvisor), news stories and booking sites.

When an assistant gets your hours wrong, look first at what your own listing says.

Step 5: Fix the source, starting with your Google listing

The fixes below start with your Google listing, and you cannot manage it yourself until you have claimed it. If nobody at your business has claimed it yet, claim your Google listing and keep control of it before anything else.

Then fix each source in this order:

1. Your Google listing. Correct the number, the hours and the address. If there is no listing, create one. If you find a second listing for the same business, make it a job of its own, because Google allows only one listing for each location. The door webpage linked at the end of this guide has the steps to claim a listing and fill it in.
2. Your website. Make every webpage show the same details, as plain text a customer can read. In the Herringbone study, Google’s AI got 84 answers in 100 right for businesses that published their details plainly, and 63 in 100 when the website was vague or silent. The website door sets out what it should carry.
3. Your Facebook Page, in the About section. The Facebook door has the steps.
4. Your WhatsApp Business profile, from the app. The WhatsApp door covers the setup.
5. Your Apple Maps place card. Apple Maps is not an assistant, but check your Apple Maps place card for the same wrong details. As of 25 September 2026, Apple’s availability webpage lists The Bahamas for location management in Apple Business, Apple’s tool for managing a business on Apple Maps, so you can claim and edit your card.
6. Webpages you do not control. Ask the directory, newspaper or booking site to correct its webpage, and keep a note of who you asked and when.

Skip the advice to set up Yelp for ChatGPT. As of 25 September 2026, Yelp’s country list does not include The Bahamas, and Yelp gives limited help with claiming listings outside the US and Canada. Put that effort into your website and your Facebook Page.

Step 6: Report the wrong answer, then ask again

Once the source is fixed, tell the assistant it was wrong.

• Google’s AI Overviews: tap the thumbs down under the overview, then “Report a problem”, and choose a category. You can add a short note, such as your correct number.
• Google’s AI Mode: tap the thumbs down under the answer and choose a category, then add your note.
• ChatGPT: tap the thumbs down under the answer to give feedback.

Then ask the same questions again a few days later, and again about a month later. Seer Interactive, a US agency, tracked what assistants said about its own business for about five weeks. It expects an answer taken from an old directory listing to change within days or weeks of the listing being fixed, and one the model learned in training to change only when a newer model is released. Nobody can promise when a particular assistant will change its answer, so keep the check on your list until it does.

When AI says your business is closed, or describes a different business

These are the most serious mistakes, because the customer does not try you at all.

If an assistant says you are closed, open your Google listing first. Check that it is not marked closed, and search Google Maps for a second listing under your name or an old name. Fix what you find, then report the answer.

If an assistant describes a different business, look for the business with the similar name and note where the mix-up happens. In August 2026, Business Insider reported on a UK building-supplies seller whose Google AI Overview summed up its reviews with complaints that belonged to other companies. Report the answer with a short note saying which business it describes, and ask again after each fix.

Once your details are right, repeat the check each month, and whenever your number, hours or address change.