Your Customers Are Asking AI Before They Ask Google
Something shifted in the last twelve months. A guest looking for a villa rental in Moraira does not type into Google the way she used to. She opens ChatGPT or Perplexity on her phone and asks: “What are the best holiday rentals in Moraira with a sea view?” She reads the answer, clicks one or two of the names that come up, and books.
If your business is not in that answer, you were never part of her decision.
The question is: do you actually know whether you appear? Most business owners on the Costa Blanca have never checked. This article shows you how to do it yourself, right now, with no paid tools and no technical background. It takes about ten minutes.
The short answer: Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overview. Type the four buying questions your customers would actually ask. Read what comes back. Note whether your name appears, who appears instead, and what the AI says about them. That is the check.
Why Four Questions, Not One
Customers do not ask AI one generic question. They move through a sequence, and each step has a different shape.
The recommendation question is the first move: “What’s a good [type of business] in [town]?” This is the broadest net. If you run a restaurant in Dénia, a German tourist arriving next week might ask: “Best restaurants in Dénia for fresh fish.” Does your name come up?
The comparison question comes when they have a shortlist: “Is [your business] better than [competitor]?” or “What’s the difference between X and Y in Calpe?” This is where AI compares businesses directly. You want to be one of the names being compared, not absent from the conversation entirely.
The specific-need question is sharper: “Holiday rental in Jávea that accepts dogs and has a private pool.” Or: “German-speaking estate agent in Dénia.” These long-tail questions often surface businesses that answer them explicitly on their website or in their listings. If you have never stated your specific services clearly anywhere online, AI has nothing to work with.
The booking or contact question closes the loop: “How do I contact [your business name]?” or “Does [your business] have online booking?” This tells you whether AI knows your contact details, opening hours, or booking process at all.
Run all four. One question is not enough, because AI answers are not a fixed directory. Each response is generated fresh, and a business that appears for the recommendation question may vanish entirely for the specific-need question.
How to Run the Check, Step by Step
You need a free account on at least two of the following: ChatGPT (chat.openai.com), Perplexity (perplexity.ai), Google (just search anything and look for the AI Overview box at the top of results). Three platforms give you a meaningful picture. One is not enough.
Step 1. Open a new, clean session. Do not use a session where you have already talked about your business. AI tools sometimes carry context from earlier in a conversation, which distorts the result.
Step 2. Phrase each question the way a customer would, not the way you would describe yourself. “Good tapas bar in Altea” rather than “Restaurante El Sol Altea official website.” Use natural language, not business names, for the first three question types.
Step 3. Read the full response. Look for your business name. If it appears, note how it is described and whether the description is accurate. If it does not appear, note which businesses are named instead and what is said about them.
Step 4. Repeat with a slightly different phrasing. “Restaurants in Altea old town” versus “where to eat in Altea” can return meaningfully different results. This is normal. It tells you something about how broadly you are represented across sources.
Step 5. Run the same questions on a second platform. Perplexity in particular shows its sources, which is useful: you can see exactly which pages it is pulling from. If none of those pages are yours, that is a gap you can address.
Write down what you find. Three columns: the question, whether you appeared, and who appeared instead. That list is your baseline.
How to Read the Result Honestly
There are three possible outcomes for each question.
You appear and the description is accurate. This is the best result. It means at least one major AI tool is picking up your business from somewhere in its sources. Note where you think it is drawing from (your Google Business Profile, a review on TripAdvisor, a directory listing, your own website) so you know what to protect and keep updated.
You appear but something is wrong. Wrong address, outdated phone number, a description that does not match what you actually offer. This matters more than not appearing at all, because a customer who acts on wrong information will have a bad experience before they even reach you. The fix is usually updating the source the AI is reading from: your Google Business Profile, your website, or a major directory listing.
You do not appear. Note who does appear instead. Are they larger businesses with more reviews? Are they better described on their own website? Do they appear in directories or platforms you are not listed on? This is not a judgment on your business quality. It is a signal about where your digital presence is thin.
One important thing to understand before you draw conclusions: the result you see today is not permanent, and it is not universal. A different person asking the same question in a different city, on a different device, or three weeks from now may get a different answer. AI systems update, model versions change, and tools like Perplexity that use live web search are especially variable. What the check gives you is a snapshot, not a verdict.
What Drives AI Visibility (and What Does Not)
No one can pay for a placement in ChatGPT or Perplexity. There is no ad slot, no sponsored result, no listing fee. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something that does not exist.
What does drive visibility is how well your business is represented across the sources these tools draw from. That includes your Google Business Profile (name, address, category, description, photos, and reviews all matter), consistent information across directories and booking platforms, review volume and recency on platforms like Google, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com, and the content on your own website, specifically whether it answers specific questions in plain language.
A restaurant in Dénia that has 180 Google reviews, an accurate and complete Business Profile, a menu on its website with dish names written out, and a few mentions in local food blogs is far more likely to appear in an AI answer than a restaurant with 12 reviews, a sparse profile, and a website that only shows a PDF menu.
The underlying logic is the same logic that always drove good local SEO. AI tools just made the stakes more visible and the speed of change faster.
Run the Free Check Across Five AI Systems
If you want to go beyond a manual spot-check, I run a free AI visibility check for businesses on the Costa Blanca. It covers five AI systems, not just ChatGPT, and returns a shareable report that shows where you appear, where you do not, and what each system says about you.
For anyone who wants to close the gaps the check reveals, the AI Visibility Setup is a structured service that works through the sources AI tools actually read: your profiles, your listings, your website content, and the signals that drive citation across AI platforms.
Get in touch and I will send you the check results within a few working days. No commitment, no pitch, just a clear picture of where you stand.