What to do when ChatGPT or Google AI gets your business wrong

01/ 07Why does an AI answer get a business wrong?

An AI answer about a local business is a summary of public material: your Google Business Profile, your website, review sites, directories and anything else that mentions you. When the answer is wrong, one of three things has usually happened. The source itself is wrong or out of date. The tool has mixed you up with a business that has a similar name. Or the tool has summarized correct material badly. Google says plainly that AI Overviews can make mistakes, and the chat assistants say the same about their own answers.

The first cause is the most common and the most fixable. Old hours on a directory you forgot about, a phone number from a previous office, a review platform profile nobody has claimed: each of these is a public page an assistant may read.

02/ 07How do I find where the mistake comes from?

1. Write down the exact wrong statement, word for word, and the question you asked.
2. Look for links. Google AI Overviews show the pages they drew on, and many chat assistants show sources when they search the web. Open each one.
3. Search for the wrong detail itself in quotation marks, for example an old phone number or an old address. The pages that still carry it are your list.
4. Check your own pages last. A footer, an old blog post or a cached contact page on your own site is often the source nobody suspected.

03/ 07What should I correct first?

Start with the sources you control, because those changes take effect the moment you make them. Your Google Business Profile comes first: name, category, hours, phone, website and service area. Your website comes second, especially the contact page and any page that states what you do and where. Keep the wording the same in both places, so a reader, human or machine, sees one consistent description of your business.

Next come the pages you can ask someone else to change: directory listings, industry sites, a local news article with a factual error. Most directories have a claim or edit process. Be specific in each request: the wrong detail, the right one and a page that proves it.

04/ 07What if the problem is a review?

If the answer repeats a complaint, look at the reviews behind it. A genuine complaint, fairly described, stays up on every major platform, and the honest response is a calm public reply and, where you can, fixing the cause. A review that breaks the platform’s own rules is different. Google’s policy for Maps content prohibits fake engagement, conflicts of interest, off-topic content and harassment, among other things, and such a review can be reported. Our guide to the signs a review breaks the rules walks through the categories, and how to report a fake review yourself shows the steps.

A review left on the wrong business, a common source of “they mixed us up” errors, has its own route, covered in a Google review left on the wrong business.

05/ 07Does the feedback button on an AI answer do anything?

Google AI Overviews and most chat assistants have a thumbs-down or report option. Use it, and say briefly what is wrong. Nobody outside those companies can tell you what happens to a single report, so treat it as one step alongside correcting the source, not as the fix itself.

06/ 07How long before the answer changes?

There is no published timetable. Assistants that search the web can reflect a corrected page quickly; answers built from older training material can lag much longer. Check again after you have corrected the sources, ask the same question the same way, and keep your note of the original wording so you can see whether it moved.

07/ 07What should I not do?

• Do not post reviews about yourself or ask staff to. That is fake engagement under Google’s policy and, in the US, the FTC’s rule on fake reviews covers it too.
• Do not publish pages written only to talk to AI tools, stuffed with your name and praise. Write for customers; a clear page serves both.
• Do not pay anyone who promises to “change what ChatGPT says”. Nobody controls that, and our post on red flags when hiring a review removal company explains why guarantees are the first warning sign.