How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business? A five-minute test for Dubai owners

Why run the test yourself

Every agency selling AI search in Dubai will show you a screenshot. The screenshot is easy to produce. The test below is harder to fake, because you choose the questions and you run them on your own device. Do it before the first sales call and you will hear every proposal differently.

It takes five minutes the first time and about three minutes every week after that.

Step 1: set up a clean window

Use a private or incognito window and do not log in. Logged-in accounts remember what you have asked before, and if you have ever typed your own company name into ChatGPT, it will be more likely to mention you back. That is not what a customer sees.

Set your location to Dubai if the engine asks. If you are testing from India or elsewhere, say "in Dubai" inside every prompt.

Step 2: write five questions a customer would type

Not what you would type. What a customer would. The pattern that works is: a category, a place, and a buying intent. Examples for different sectors:

• Clinic: "best dermatologist in Jumeirah", "which clinic in Dubai does laser hair removal with good reviews"
• Real estate: "best real estate agency for off-plan in Dubai Marina", "who should I use to rent out my apartment in JVC"
• Software: "which company builds HR software for UAE companies", "best WhatsApp automation vendor in Dubai"
• Restaurant: "best Lebanese restaurant in Business Bay for a business lunch"
• Any business: "[your company name] Dubai", which tells you what the engines already believe about you

Always include your own name as the fifth question. The answer to that one is often the most useful: it shows whether the engines have your address, your services and your founders right, or whether they are mixing you up with someone else.

Step 3: run them in four engines

ChatGPT (with search on), Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Each one draws on different sources, so a business can be named in Perplexity and invisible in ChatGPT in the same week. Twenty answers in total.

For each answer, record three things in a spreadsheet:

1. Were you named? Yes, no, or named but with wrong details.
2. Who was named instead? List every business.
3. What sources did the engine cite? Click the small source chips. These are the websites the engine trusts for your category, and they are your to-do list.

Screenshot each answer and put the date in the file name. In a month you will want the before picture.

Step 4: read the result

There are four common outcomes.

Named in most answers with correct details. You are in the set. The work is holding the position and widening it to more questions.

Named in one or two engines only. Usually Perplexity first, because it leans on recent web pages. The engines that miss you are reading sources you are not on yet. Look at what they cited.

Named with wrong details. Old address, a service you stopped offering, a founder who left. This is an identity problem, and it is the cheapest thing to fix: make your name, address, phone and description identical on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and every directory.

Not named anywhere. The most common result for a Dubai business that has not done this work. It does not mean the business is bad. It means there is nothing on the web the engines can quote about you for those questions. Look at the cited sources: if they are directories and review sites, you need profiles and reviews. If they are articles and guides, you need pages that answer the question directly.

Step 5: repeat weekly

Same prompts, same engines, same spreadsheet, every week. Movement in AI answers is slow and then sudden: nothing for three weeks, then a first appearance in one engine, then two. The weekly log is the only way to see it, and it is the only measurement we accept from ourselves.

If you send us your twenty screenshots, we will tell you which of the four outcomes you are in and what the cited sources say you should do first. There is no charge for that, because the test is the sales call.