ChatGPT recommends your competitor. Now what?
- AI visibility
- ChatGPT
- Local visibility
If ChatGPT recommends your competitor and not you, the cause is almost always this: there is more clear, consistent information online about your competitor than about you. AI models have no opinion on who the better tradesperson is — they only know what is written down. So the fix is not "become better than your competitor" (you may already be), but making sure the internet knows it too: complete business profiles, a website that says what you do, and mentions in the places AI systems read.
Try it yourself: what does ChatGPT say about your trade?
Open ChatGPT and ask the question your customer would ask: "What is a good garage in Antwerp?" or "Which hairdresser in Leuven would you recommend?". Three things can happen:
- You get named. Congratulations — now guard that position, because your competitors may be reading this article too.
- Your competitor gets named. Then this is happening daily, with customers you never even see.
- A vague list appears, or nothing. Then the position of "the answer" in your town is still up for grabs.
More and more people put these questions to ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity instead of Google. And those tools do not return ten results to compare — they make a recommendation. Whoever is in it gets the phone call.
Why does ChatGPT pick your competitor over you?
An AI model only "knows" your business through what it has read or what it finds live during a search. In practice, these things weigh heavily:
- Consistent basics. A name, address, phone number and opening hours that are exactly the same everywhere — on your website, your Google Business Profile and in business directories.
- A website that says what you do and where. "Welcome to Vandamme Ltd" tells an AI nothing. "Plumber in Bruges for sanitary work, heating and gas installations" does.
- Structured data (schema markup). Invisible labels in your website that literally tell machines: this is a business, this is the address, these are the hours.
- Reviews and mentions. The more often your business appears in a clear context, the more confident the model becomes about you.
The competitor being recommended today usually just has more of that homework in order. It is rarely more than that.
What does that look like in practice?
Take two garages in the same town. Garage A has a website from 2016 opening with "Welcome to our website", a half-completed Google Business Profile and three reviews. Garage B describes its services per car brand in plain language, completed its profile fully, collected eighty reviews and replies to all of them. Ask ChatGPT "which garage nearby is good with a Volkswagen?" and the answer is predictable — not because garage B is better with a wrench, but because it is better described.
You see the same pattern with hairdressers, restaurants and plumbers. If your business stays vague online, the model fills the gap with the business that is not. It really is that simple — and that unfair to skilled tradespeople who never did their online homework.
What can you do about it this week?
No website rebuild required. Start here:
- Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the ten questions customers ask about your trade, and note who gets named each time.
- Put in plain language on your homepage what you do and which towns you serve.
- Complete your Google Business Profile — category, hours, services, photos. AI search leans heavily on that data.
- Check that your name, address and number are identical everywhere, down to the spelling.
- Ask happy customers for a review, and reply to every review that comes in.
- Add a frequently-asked-questions page: real customer questions, answered short and concretely. Exactly the format AI systems like to cite.
Do you need to hire a marketer for this?
No. Everything above you can do yourself, given time and discipline. The reality of running a business is that "time and discipline" usually go to customers — and this kind of maintenance sits untouched for months. That is exactly the gap a competitor with half an hour a week jumps into.
Whether you do it yourself or have it done: start by measuring. Run the free RankPrima Scan and see straight away how your business stands in the data sources voice assistants and AI search rely on — and which gaps to close first.