A few weeks ago I wrote about spending a week asking AI about local businesses and what I found. Today I want to share the other side of that story — what happens when I put the phone in the client’s hands and make them do it themselves.

I started doing this about six months into running PromptBridge. I’d been describing the problem in calls — explaining the invisible customer loss, walking through the mechanics of AI recommendations, trying to make the abstract concrete. And I kept hitting the same wall: people would nod along, say it made sense, and then do nothing. Not because they didn’t believe me. Because they hadn’t felt it yet.

So I changed my approach. Now, within the first five minutes of any discovery call, I ask: “Can you open ChatGPT on your phone or computer right now and type ‘best [your service] in [your city]’?” And then I wait.

The Three Reactions

In doing this dozens of times now, the reactions fall into three buckets pretty consistently. The first reaction — maybe 10% of the time — is quiet satisfaction. Their name appears. Sometimes they’re even cited first. These are usually businesses that have been doing the right things for a while without knowing it: high review volume, active GBP, well-structured website. They feel validated and curious about how to push further.

The second reaction — maybe 30% — is mixed. They appear on some platforms but not others. Or they appear but not prominently. Or a competitor appears ahead of them when they know their service quality is better. This reaction generates the most engagement in a conversation because the problem isn’t abstract anymore, but it’s also not crushing. There’s something to work with and they can see exactly what better looks like.

The third reaction — the most common, roughly 60% — is the one I’ll never get entirely used to. They type the query. They look at the result. Their name isn’t there. Sometimes a competitor they know well is named prominently. Sometimes it’s a business they’ve never heard of. And they just… sit with it for a second. Then usually something like: “Huh. I had no idea.” Or sometimes, more directly: “That’s my competitor. How are they showing up and I’m not?”

The Conversation That Follows

That third reaction always opens into a real conversation — one that no amount of explaining from me could have created as effectively. Because now it’s not hypothetical. They’ve seen it. Their business was invisible in the answer and a competitor was visible. That experience does more in 30 seconds than a 20-minute presentation could do.

What I find interesting is what people say next. Almost nobody gets angry. Almost nobody is defensive about it. The most common response is something closer to genuine curiosity — “How does that work? Why them and not me?” And that question, coming from the business owner themselves rather than being asked by me, is the beginning of a very different kind of conversation than a typical sales call.

The Competitor Who Appeared Instead

The most interesting part of this exercise isn’t when the prospect’s name doesn’t appear. It’s who appears instead. I’ve now done this enough times to recognize patterns in what makes those appearing businesses different. And it’s almost never what people expect. It’s rarely the business with the biggest marketing budget. It’s rarely the one with the most social media followers. It’s almost always the one with the most reviews, the most complete GBP, and the most consistently maintained digital presence.

In one memorable call, a realtor I was speaking with saw a competitor appear in ChatGPT’s answer. She knew this competitor personally. She said flatly: “I outsell her every quarter. I have more experience. My client satisfaction is better.” All of that was probably true. But her competitor had 180 Google reviews and she had 34. And in the world of AI recommendations, 180 reviews beats 34 every single time, regardless of what the underlying reality of service quality is.

That’s the part of this work that feels most urgent to me. Quality doesn’t automatically translate to visibility anymore. You have to actively build the signals that tell AI you’re trustworthy — and review volume is the loudest of those signals by a significant margin.

Try It Yourself Right Now

You don’t need a call with me to have this experience. Open ChatGPT right now — or Perplexity, or Google AI — and type “best [your service type] in [your city].” See what comes back. Sit with whatever you find for a moment. If you appear, great — now ask yourself what it would take to appear even more prominently, more consistently, across more platforms. If you don’t appear, you’ve just identified the most important visibility gap in your business right now. Either way, the test takes 60 seconds and gives you more useful information than most marketing audits that cost thousands of dollars.

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