The short answer
ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity don’t pick a favourite. When someone asks for a recommendation, they search the web, read what they find and repeat the names that come up most often on sources they trust. If your competitor is named and you aren’t, your competitor is on more of those sources, or easier to read. If the AI describes you wrongly, it found an old or conflicting page about you. Both problems are fixed at the source, not inside ChatGPT.
Why a competitor gets named
An AI answer to “best aesthetic clinic in Jumeirah” or “who can help me set up a company in Dubai” is built from a handful of web pages: Google and Bing rankings, directory listings, review sites, “top 10” articles, news mentions and forum threads. The assistant names the businesses that appear across several of those pages with the same details. One great website on its own is rarely enough.
So the competitor you keep seeing is usually not better at what you do. They are better documented: a complete Google Business Profile, reviews that mention the service by name, a listing on the directories your industry uses, and a page that answers the exact question in its first two sentences.
When AI gets your business wrong
Wrong prices, old services, a closed branch, the wrong phone number. These almost never come from nowhere. The assistant is reading something real that is out of date: a page you forgot to remove, a directory profile from three years ago, a second website, or a social bio that says something different from your homepage.
We are dealing with this ourselves. Our earlier website, sylowai.com, described an automation business. In November 2026 some search indexes still showed that old description next to sylow.ae. The fix is the same one we do for clients: send every old page to the matching new page with a permanent redirect, publish one key facts page that states who we are, and use one legal name and licence number everywhere.
How to see which sources it used
You don’t have to guess. Spend fifteen minutes on this before you pay anyone:
- Ask the question your customers would ask, word for word, with web search switched on.
- Ask it again on two other days, and in at least two assistants. Answers vary, so one try proves nothing.
- Open every cited link. Note which ones mention your competitor and which mention you.
- Write down the date, the assistant and the exact wording. That log is your baseline.
The pages that keep showing up are your to-do list. This is also what our free AI check does for five questions, and how we measure results every month.
What to fix first
In this order, because each step depends on the one before:
- Let the crawlers in. Check that your robots.txt doesn’t block OAI-SearchBot, the crawler OpenAI uses to show sites in ChatGPT search. If your site sits behind Cloudflare, check its AI crawler setting too: since July 2025 new domains are asked whether to allow AI crawlers, and many owners said no without realising what it meant.
- One page per service. Each page answers the main question in the first two sentences: what you do, where, for whom and roughly what it costs.
- Identical details everywhere. The same business name, address and phone on your website, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. Remove or redirect anything old.
- Be on the pages the answers cite. Directories, review sites and comparison articles in your industry. Ask happy clients for reviews that name the service.
- Regulated? Start with the register. Clinics, brokers and law firms should make sure their entry with the regulator (DHA, RERA or DLD, the FCA, the SRA) matches the website exactly, and that every claim follows that regulator’s advertising rules. In Dubai, the DHA publishes standards for medical advertising content.
What nobody can promise
No one can guarantee that ChatGPT will name you for a given question, on a given day. Anyone who says they can place you “inside” ChatGPT is describing either luck or ads. ChatGPT does now show ads in some countries, but OpenAI says they are labelled, shown separately and do not change the answer itself.
What can be promised is the work and the measurement: the fixes above, done properly, and a monthly log of the same questions so you can see whether it is working. If you want to know where you stand today, ask for the free check.
Questions people ask
How do I correct what ChatGPT says about my business?
Find where the wrong detail comes from: an old page, an old profile, a directory or a second website. Fix or remove it at the source, make your own site state the right facts plainly on one page, and keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere. You can also use the feedback buttons in ChatGPT, but fixing the source is what lasts.
Why does ChatGPT keep naming the same three firms?
Because those firms appear on the pages its search step finds and trusts: rankings, directories, review sites, comparison lists and forum threads. Being on more of those pages, with consistent details, is how a new name gets into the list.
Does ChatGPT use Google Maps?
OpenAI doesn’t say that it reads Google Maps, and nobody outside OpenAI can see exactly which sources it weighs. In practice, businesses that are strong on Google Maps usually also have reviews, directory listings and mentions elsewhere, so they tend to be named by AI too. A complete Google Business Profile matters for Google’s own AI answers either way.
How long until a correction shows up in AI answers?
There is no fixed timeline. Answers that use live web search can change within days or weeks of a fix. What a model learned in training changes much more slowly, often months. Check the same question every week and keep a dated log.
Written by Esh, founder of Sylow AI. Esh leads every project personally: website builds, AI visibility work and the monthly tracking of what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and Google say about each client. More about Esh. Last reviewed 2 November 2026.
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