When a customer types a question into ChatGPT or Perplexity about a local business, they aren't thinking about SEO. They're trying to solve an immediate problem: Can I book tonight? Do they handle this? What will it cost? AI answers those questions whether your business has given it good data or not.
Here are the six questions that come up most — and what happens when the answer is wrong.
"Are you open right now?"
This is the most common question by volume. A customer is sitting in their car at 7 p.m. wondering whether Riverside Dental is still taking walk-ins or whether Maple Street Bakery stops serving espresso before closing time.
AI pulls hours from Google Business Profile, your website, and aggregators like Yelp. If those sources disagree — or if you changed your hours and only updated one — the model picks whichever source it trusts most, which may not be the correct one.
The fix is boring but real: every place you list hours must match, and holiday hours need updating before the holiday, not after.
"How much does [service] cost?"
Customers would rather ask AI than call and ask. When pricing is missing from your site, AI either says "prices vary, call for a quote" (which sounds evasive), guesses based on competitors in your area, or surfaces a number from an old directory listing.
None of those outcomes help you. A starting-price range — "drain clearing starts around $180" — is enough for AI to give a useful answer and enough for a customer to decide you're worth calling. If the data gap is deliberate, be aware AI fills it anyway, just not in your favor.
"Are they any good?"
Customers phrase the reputation question a dozen ways: "Are they reliable?", "Do they do good work?", "Would you recommend them?"
AI doesn't have its own rating system. It synthesizes whatever review content it has indexed — Google, Yelp, Facebook, niche directories like Healthgrades for healthcare providers. A business with 200 Google reviews and nothing else is readable but thin. A business with reviews spread across three or four platforms gives AI more to work with and usually earns a more confident, positive summary.
Asking satisfied customers for reviews across more than one platform is one of the highest-leverage moves for AI visibility. For a fuller picture of how AI decides which businesses to surface, see our guide on how to get recommended by ChatGPT.
"Do they offer [specific service]?"
"Does Northfield Plumbing fix tankless water heaters?" "Does that bakery make gluten-free?" "Can I bring my cat, or is it dogs only?"
AI answers these by reading your website and business listings. If a service isn't mentioned anywhere, AI says it doesn't know — or says no. A plumber who handles tankless units but never lists it is invisible to every customer who asks that question.
A services page with specific detail, or even a short FAQ section, pays off far beyond its word count. This is the most common cause of wrong AI answers that we see; our guide on why AI gets your business info wrong goes deeper on it.
"Where are they, and is there parking?"
Location questions go beyond the address. Customers in dense areas ask about parking. Customers with mobility issues ask about accessibility. Customers new to the area ask what neighborhood you're in or what you're near.
Google Business Profile has fields for parking and accessibility attributes, and AI reads them. Most businesses leave those fields blank. If you have a lot, wheelchair access, or a useful landmark nearby ("across the street from the post office"), put it somewhere crawlable — your Contact page, your GBP description — not just in your head.
"How do I book an appointment?"
This one seems obvious but fails constantly. A customer asks AI "how do I make an appointment at Lakeview Family Dentistry" expecting a direct answer: call this number, book online here, walk in during these hours.
If your booking URL isn't in your Google Business Profile, isn't on your homepage, or changed since an old directory listing was created, AI gives a vague answer or the wrong one. A customer who has to hunt for your booking method often doesn't bother.
Keep the booking path in every place AI looks: GBP, your site header or footer, and your main directory listings. Consistency across three sources is usually enough.
Run a free scan to see how an AI assistant currently answers these six questions about your specific business. The scan grades your AI visibility A–F and flags which data gaps are producing wrong answers — most are fixable in an afternoon without a developer.