How to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand

This guide was first published on saurabhbhayana.com and later picked up by the AI section of DEV Community on October 22, 2026. It walks through a method for checking whether a local brand shows up in ChatGPT's recommendations. The core exercise is simple: start a fresh chat and ask for the best plumber in your town, then open another new chat and ask the same question again. In the guide's experience, the two answers frequently differ, and there is a fair chance your business appears in neither one. The author argues that this matters more every month, and offers practical steps for what to do when your brand is not mentioned.

Two figures are cited to frame the stakes. OpenAI said in February 2026 that ChatGPT had reached 900 million weekly users. Separately, BrightLocal's 2026 survey of US consumers found that 45 percent said they now use ChatGPT or other AI tools to find local businesses, up from 6 percent in the same survey a year earlier. The guide does not clarify whether those two numbers come from comparable samples.

No follow-up coverage in the available material describes revisions to the guide, an official response from OpenAI, or any evidence on whether the suggested routine actually changes how often a brand gets surfaced. The article therefore stands as a practical walkthrough of the checking method, plus a snapshot of the usage statistics the author used to argue that the question is worth asking.