Matt Turley, Continuum. Updated September 25, 2026.
Your customers are asking ChatGPT who to hire. It answers with names. Here is how it picks them, what we found when we checked our own business, and a $299 check that tells you where you stand.
Only if the pages it reads for your buyer’s question present your business as the answer. ChatGPT can read your site, even link to it, and still name someone else. The only way to know is to ask the questions your buyers ask, several times on each AI tool, and count who gets named. We did that for our own business: ChatGPT linked our site on 4 of 15 questions and named us on none.
When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini for a recommendation, the answer is built from what the tool reads for that question. Mostly that is other people’s pages: “best of” lists, directories and marketplaces, Reddit threads, and competitors’ own guides. If those pages put a business forward as the answer, the AI tends to repeat it. If they never mention you, neither will the AI.
In our own check, the 135 AI answers carried 1,814 source links. “Best of” list articles showed up in 82 of the 135 answers, directories and marketplaces in 73, and Reddit threads in 42. Your market will have its own mix, which is why the check lists the sites the AI reads for your questions.
There are two different facts here, and most tools blur them. Named means your business name is in the words of the answer. Linked means your site is one of the sources the answer shows. You can be linked and still not be named.
That is exactly what happened to us. Across all three tools, our site was linked in 34 of the 135 answers. Only 3 of those answers said our name. The AI was reading us for background and recommending someone else.
On 24 September 2026 we asked 15 questions our buyers ask, 3 times each, on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. Here is the plain result.
The business the AI named most for our questions was Toptal, in 31 of the 135 answers. We were named in 3. Plain web search (Brave) had our site in its top 10 for 5 of the 15 questions, so ranking in search did not carry over into being recommended.
This is the report a buyer gets, run on us. The questions, answers and numbers are real.
Full sample report (PDF, 9 pages) →
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Why the majority rule matters: ChatGPT did name us 3 times, once each on 3 different questions. A single screenshot of any of those would have said ChatGPT recommends Continuum. Three runs said it does not, yet.
One report: whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini name your business across your buyers’ questions, who they name instead, and the top fixes you can actually do. Book and pay $299 on Cal.com, answer the questions on the booking form, and your 20-minute kickoff call with Matt is set. Matt reads every report before it is sent.
Book and pay $299 on Cal.com, then answer the questions on the booking form.
In your inbox within 3 business days of your kickoff call, or it’s free. If it isn’t useful, tell me within 7 days of getting it and I refund the full $299. You keep the report either way.
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