Google Shows 10 Pages Of Results. ChatGPT Shows 3. Which List Are You On?

Search Google for "best kitchen remodeler in Austin" and you'll get over 10 pages of results, 20 per page. Ask ChatGPT the exact same question and it comes back with about 5 results and a recommended shortlist of 3. That gap between 200 results and 3 names is the whole game right now, and most small businesses have no idea which list they're on.

The experiment, and why it matters

Try it yourself with any local service. Google buries you in pages of blue links. ChatGPT skips straight to naming a handful of businesses and putting 3 of them forward as the answer. Your prospect isn't scrolling through page 6. They're calling the 3 names ChatGPT gave them.

This exact process runs thousands of times a day, across every trade, in every city. And the businesses landing on that shortlist didn't pay for the placement. No ad spend, no bidding war. The AI simply picked them.

So why does the AI pick one business over another?

Think of ChatGPT as the most trusted friend in town. Before it recommends anyone, it reads everything it can find: the business's website, its reviews, and whatever else is said about it across the internet. Then it makes up its mind.

Here's the catch. Most business websites were built roughly a decade ago, back when the only audience that mattered was Google. Those sites tell an AI engine almost nothing useful about who the business actually is or what it's good at. So the AI recommends whoever it can actually understand, and that has nothing to do with who does the best work in town. A shop with the best reputation for three counties can lose the recommendation entirely to a competitor with a clearer, newer website.

Find out where you actually stand

Checking this manually by typing a question into ChatGPT once won't tell you much, since a single answer is close to a coin flip. That's why I built a free tool called AI Spartan.

Give it your website address, and it asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI the exact questions your buyers are asking. It brings the answers back to you word for word, so you can see who's getting recommended in your niche, how often your business shows up, and who's currently taking your customers instead. The whole thing takes about 2 minutes and it's free.

The tool generates a full report you can hand to your website developer, or you and I can go through it together on a free 15-minute screen-share call, and my team can fix the whole website for you if that's easier. The goal is a modern site that AI engines finally understand, so your name starts appearing in the top 5 suggestions for your niche. The switch usually costs less than what you're already paying your current SEO company, and setup fees are waived for the first founding clients.

What about my existing Google rankings?

That's usually the part that makes people hesitate. One client of mine, who sells across the US and Canada, had that exact worry before switching. He kept every single Google ranking he had, and even increased his rankings on his most important keywords. On top of that, AI engines started recommending him. His traffic jumped 45% within a few weeks of making the switch.

Your two-minute homework

ChatGPT has over 1 billion active monthly users. When they start searching for what you sell, you want your name on the shortlist, not buried on page 6 of a Google search nobody scrolls to. Run the free AI Spartan audit and see exactly what the AI engines are saying about your business right now.