Does ChatGPT recommend different businesses in KL, Penang and Johor Bahru?

ChatGPT recommends different businesses depending on the customer's city: in our test, once it had a customer's city, it added that city to its own web searches and recommended businesses from there.

In our test of ChatGPT, only 4 of the 68 businesses named across KL, Penang and JB turned up in more than one city.

How different are ChatGPT's recommendations in KL, Penang and Johor Bahru?

ChatGPT recommended almost entirely different businesses in KL, Penang and Johor Bahru in our test, even though nobody named a town. We asked about aircon servicing, kitchen renovation and SPM tuition, in English, Malay and Chinese.

The rest had no clear location, offered branches in several cities, were in another test city (once) or were outside Malaysia (once). Every answer is in the CSV.

So a Johor Bahru or Penang business didn't need a KL office to be named. None of the businesses offered there could be placed in KL.

One aircon company with a web page for each city's branch was named in all three cities for the Malay question, and ChatGPT cited the matching city's page each time. A Penang tuition centre was offered to a Johor Bahru parent as a "JB-area" option, though its own page gives an address in Perai.

How does ChatGPT know which city a customer is in?

ChatGPT can use a customer's location to recommend businesses near them, and in the app it can estimate their city from their internet connection without being told. OpenAI's help page says ChatGPT "may use your IP address to estimate your general location, such as your country, state, or city"¹. Sharing device location is optional and off by default.

That estimate can miss. MaxMind, a widely used IP-location database, places about two in three Malaysian IP addresses within 50 km of the right spot³. For mobile connections, it's just over half. We don't know which lookup OpenAI uses.

In our test, once it had the city, it wrote that city into its searches, so a "near me" question, or one with no town at all, got a local answer. A parent in Penang asked, in Chinese, for a good SPM tuition centre, naming no town. One of ChatGPT's searches was "SPM tuition centre Penang George Town latest recommendations 2026". How it rewrites questions into searches is covered in our guide to query fan-out.

What happens when ChatGPT doesn't know the customer's city?

When we gave ChatGPT only "Malaysia" as the customer's location, it asked for their city or area in all 15 answers. Most also named a few businesses anyway, and those leaned heavily on the Klang Valley.

Over half of those answers added "Kuala Lumpur" to a search on their own. None of the 22 business mentions was in Penang or Johor Bahru. Our reading: a customer whose city ChatGPT can't tell may start from a KL-centred list.

Does naming the city in the question give the same businesses?

Naming the city in the question localised the searches too, and changed the list about as much as simply asking again. As a control, we asked the English questions again with the city written in, such as "in Penang". Every one of those 27 answers searched for that city.

In this test, the named-city lists shared about a quarter of their businesses with the no-place lists, as two runs of one question did. Lists change from run to run anyway, as we found in why ChatGPT gives a different answer every time.

Tuition in KL, Chinese-language tuition in JB and kitchen renovation in Penang gave the thinnest local lists. Asked in Chinese by a parent located in KL, ChatGPT gave advice but named no tuition centre in any of 3 runs.

What can't this test tell me about ChatGPT's recommendations by city?

• The ChatGPT app. We set the location through OpenAI's API, not the app. One agency's 2025 test abroad found logged-out ChatGPT rarely tailored answers to location⁴.
• Other towns and trades. We tested three cities, three trades and three runs each, on one day.
• Whether every address is right. We checked the answers and, where unclear, the cited pages, not by visiting.

How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business in my own city?

To get ChatGPT to recommend your business in your own city, remember that in our test it answered each city from what it found about that city. Our reading: your competition is the handful of local businesses it can read about online, not every firm in Malaysia.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT says about your business when your customers ask, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Ask with your city named. In our test, naming the city in the question made every search use that city. Ask logged out, for each city you serve, using questions like those in our question bank.
3. Give each branch its own page, with its real address. The one firm named in all three cities had a page per branch, and ChatGPT cited the matching one. Our reading, untested: that helped, and naming your areas in full should too.
4. Check where ChatGPT says you are. If it places you in the wrong town, fix your address everywhere it's listed, as covered in how ChatGPT knows who your business is.

Each city can see its own shortlist, so EasyFound, an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses, checks how you're named across six AI tools in English, Malay and Chinese, then works on the pages they read. Start with the free check below.