How does ChatGPT know who my business is?

A customer asks ChatGPT what time your shop opens tomorrow. It answers with hours from an old food blog, or from the other shop in town with your name.

ChatGPT usually works out which business you are from the pages it finds, pairing your name with the facts around it: your town, address, phone number and what you sell. When those facts agree everywhere, it has a better chance of telling you apart. When they don't, it pieces you together from whatever it finds.

In our test, we asked about a well-known Ipoh coffee shop with no working website we could find. Five answers gave it six different sets of opening hours.

What is an entity in AI SEO?

An entity, in AI SEO, is one specific thing that search engines and AI tools can recognise as itself, such as your business. Its facts, such as where you are and what you sell, make it one entity rather than just a name.

Words collide too: in Malaysia, "AEO" is also the name of a customs scheme (what AEO means for a Malaysian business).

How does ChatGPT tell my business apart from others with the same name?

ChatGPT tells same-named businesses apart through the details around the name. In our test it searched the web before 32 of 33 answers. Its searches paired the name with a place, and its answers used the addresses on the pages it found.

We found no reliable source linking the two food businesses, though one travel page ChatGPT cited treats them as one. Asked about the clinic group "in Kuala Lumpur", one answer described a same-named clinic in Indonesia.

Where does ChatGPT get my opening hours and phone number?

ChatGPT gets your opening hours and phone number from the pages its search returns: your website if it has them, else directories, maps apps and blogs. In our test, when ChatGPT quoted the business's own website, the hours or phone number matched it in 5 of 6 answers. The sixth led with a map app's hours.

Without the business's website, it got them wrong both times: hours from a travel-planning site, and a different clinic's number.

The Ipoh coffee shop's hours came from blogs, directories and travel sites, and they disagreed.

What should match across my website, Google Business Profile and directories?

Your name, address, phone number, category and hours should match across your website, Google Business Profile, social pages and directories. Google's guidelines say: "Your name should reflect your business’s real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers"¹.

1. Name. Use one written form everywhere. If customers also know you as "Kedai Kek" something or by a Chinese name, list those on your About page.
2. SSM name. For company names, SSM's check looks for names "identical" to ones already registered, ignoring words such as "Sdn" and "Bhd"². Our reading is that similar names still get through. Show your registered name in your website footer.
3. Address. Write it the same way everywhere, with unit number, taman and postcode.
4. Phone. One number per branch, the same one your own site shows.
5. Category. Use the same words, such as "halal cake shop", not "bakery" here and "cafe" there.
6. Hours. Put them on your website as plain text, and update every listing when they change.
7. Branches. Give each branch its own page. If a same-named shop isn't yours, say "We have no other outlets".
8. Links. Link your website to your Google Business Profile and social pages, and back.

Does schema markup help ChatGPT know who my business is?

Schema markup, or structured data, helps search engines read which business a page is about, but it hasn't been shown to raise ChatGPT citations. Google says Organization markup "can help Google better understand your organization's administrative details and disambiguate your organization in search results"³.

LocalBusiness markup adds your address, phone and hours⁴, and its sameAs line lists your other official pages: the "URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity", in Schema.org's words⁵.

For ChatGPT, the evidence is thin. Ahrefs found no significant rise in ChatGPT citations for pages already cited heavily by AI, but says schema "might still play a role in helping them get crawled, parsed, or indexed in the first place"⁶. It also reports a searchVIU test in which ChatGPT ignored JSON-LD when fetching a page live. We found no OpenAI documentation either way.

Use it alongside visible text, never instead. Google's rule: "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page"⁷.

What can't our test tell me about how ChatGPT recognises my business?

• How often this happens. It's 33 answers about a handful of names, from one day.
• The app. We asked through OpenAI's API, which can answer differently from the ChatGPT app.
• Whether fixing it works. We didn't fix listings and re-test.

How do I make sure ChatGPT knows which business is mine?

Every fact on your own page is one less thing ChatGPT has to guess.

1. Request EasyFound's free check. See what ChatGPT says when customers ask about your business by name, then go through it with us on a free call.
2. Ask ChatGPT yourself, logged out: "What time does [your shop] in [your town] open?" Compare the answer with your own page.
3. Work through the checklist above, starting with your hours and phone number.

As an AI SEO service for Malaysian businesses, EasyFound checks how six AI tools describe you in English, Malay and Chinese, then tidies the pages they piece you together from. Start with the free check below.