Tonight, once the phones are quiet, open ChatGPT and type the question a stranger would type to find someone who does what you do. Read the answer slowly, paying attention to who gets named and what it says about them. It’s the plainest way to ask ChatGPT about your business the way a new customer would, before they’ve ever heard your name. Whatever comes back is your starting line.
Ask the question a stranger would type.
Write the question in full, the way someone types when they’re unsure and want help. A homeowner might ask who to call to replace an aging furnace in your town and what to check before hiring them. A patient might ask which practices in the area place implants and what the first visit involves. For a family, it could be which assisted living communities nearby suit a parent who needs more support. A seller might ask which agents in town know their neighborhood best.
Use your own town and service, but leave your business name out. A new customer doesn’t know it yet, so the test only works if you search the way they do.
When the answer comes back, look past the list of names to the details it seems sure about, such as the specialties it mentions. If your business is missing or shows up in a sentence that could describe anyone, that’s the gap: your work is better in person than it looks in that answer.
If you’ve never checked, you have fair reasons to doubt any of this matters. Referrals still keep the phone ringing, and you’ve probably sat through pitches for new channels that turned out to be noise. This test takes a few minutes, and you can judge the result yourself.
What it costs when the answer names someone else.
Many buying decisions now start with a question typed into ChatGPT or Google’s AI answer.
Picture a dental practice with years of implant cases behind it that never appears when someone asks who places implants nearby. The consult goes to the practice the answer named. A heating and cooling company can lose a job the same way when its technicians explain repair versus replacement better than anyone in the county but the AI answer points to a competitor with a clearer website. A tour at a senior living community or a listing appointment with an agent can slip away just as quietly. Nobody turned the first business down. It never came up.
That’s why the cost is so easy to miss. It doesn’t show up as a lost lead in your inquiry log, because the inquiry never arrived.
Why AI skips businesses that are good at the work.
AI can only repeat what has been written down and published. It can’t sit in on your consults or ride along on a service call. If the only page about your work offers little beyond quality service from a trusted local team, there is nothing specific to repeat. A generic service page gives AI nothing to quote.
Think about where your best explanations happen. A dentist explains on the phone why one patient is a good candidate for a procedure and another should wait. A technician at someone’s kitchen table makes the case for repairing a twenty-year-old system one more time. If that kind of explanation never ends up online, AI has no way to repeat it.
What does end up online may be stale: picture a blog last updated a few years ago, or service pages written at launch and never touched again. A marketing retainer that runs without a system may not change that, if the monthly fee buys a few generic posts and nobody has a process for getting the owner’s knowledge onto the page.
ReadTomato’s view is that AI looks for real expertise when it decides who to name, meaning specific answers to specific questions.
It also checks what others say about you and whether your details hold together. Reviews and mentions you didn’t write yourself count as proof from people besides you. Your name, address, phone number and services shouldn’t contradict each other from one listing to the next.
If your own expertise isn’t written down anywhere, the answer on your screen has no way to include it. That part can change.
What the businesses AI names have written down.
The fix starts with answering the questions customers ask, in plain language and in your own voice. A page that explains the decision a customer is facing, drawing on cases the business has actually handled, is the opposite of a generic service page.
Alongside those pages, the business keeps its name, address, phone number and services reading the same everywhere it is listed, from the website to the Google Business Profile and earns reviews and mentions it didn’t write.
You don’t have to become a writer to do this. What you already say to customers every week needs to land on pages that answer real questions, month after month. The month-after-month part is where it can stall, if the knowledge is there but the hours to write it down aren’t.
ReadTomato built Hot Take Engine around that problem. At its center is one monthly conversation, about an hour long, that captures your expertise and the real stories behind it, with no prep and no writing on your part. That conversation becomes content built around the questions your customers ask AI, which you approve before it goes live. No one can guarantee what an AI tool will say. A business can control whether there’s something specific and accurate for it to find.
Five things to check after you read the answer.
- Save the answer. Copy it word for word, along with the exact question you typed, as your dated baseline.
- Note who was named and why. Look at the details the answer repeated about them: a specialty, a neighborhood, a credential, something a reviewer said. Then look for where those details appear online.
- Read your own service pages. Look for a direct answer to the exact question you asked. If a stranger couldn’t find it there, an AI tool has little to work with either.
- Check your details match. Your business name, address, phone number, hours and services should read the same on your website and in every listing, starting with your Google Business Profile.
- Write down the questions you answer on the phone every week. The ones your website never answers are the first pages worth writing.
Once pages answering those questions are live, ask the same question again and compare the result with the answer you saved. If you’d like a second opinion on what ChatGPT said about your market, send it through the Contact Us page and talk through what’s missing from the pages it could have read.
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