Free guide · The 5-minute AI visibility self-test
The 5 Questions to Ask ChatGPT About Your Business Right Now
A 5-minute self-test from Cory Salisbury, founder of Neuron HQ. By the last page you'll know something most owners in your town don't: whether AI hands your customers to you, or to your competitor.
Hey, Cory here.
Something big changed, and most local business owners haven't noticed yet. In 2026, your customers stopped Googling and started asking. They type "who's the best [your trade] in [your city]" into ChatGPT, and instead of ten blue links and a map, they get back two or three names, a reason to trust each one, and sometimes a phone number. The customer who calls from an AI answer arrives half-sold. They're not shopping around. The machine already told them who to trust.
Here's the uncomfortable part. The AI is answering questions about your trade, in your town, right now. Either with your name or with your competitor's. There is no third option. This self-test tells you which one it is, in about five minutes, for free. No tools, no login, no jargon. You paste five questions and you read what comes back.
Before you start
How to run the test
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Open ChatGPT. The free version is fine. If you see a "Search" or web-browsing option, turn it on so it pulls live information.
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Swap in your details. Everywhere you see [your trade], [your city], or [your business name], type your real ones. "Plumber in Boise." "Med spa in Frisco." "Salt Lake Roofing Co."
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Paste the questions one at a time and screenshot each answer. You'll want the screenshots later, trust me.
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Keep score. Give yourself 1 point for every question where your business shows up the way a customer would need it to. The scoring guide is at the bottom.
That's it. Five questions, five minutes, and you'll know something about your business that most of your competitors don't know about theirs.
Question 1 of 5
The recommendation question
Who is the best [your trade] in [your city]? Give me your top recommendations and why.
This is the new "top of Google." It's the single most valuable question in your market, because the person asking it is about to call somebody.
Your business name is in the answer, ideally in the top two or three, with a reason attached. "Known for fast response times." "Consistently strong reviews." When the AI gives a reason, the customer adopts that reason as their own.
A list of your competitors. Or worse, the AI punts to a directory: "check Yelp or Angi for options." If it names three companies and none of them is you, those three companies are splitting your future customers.
What it means for your pipeline: this answer is where referral-quality leads now come from, except nobody had to refer you. If you're in it, strangers call you already trusting you. If you're not, you're invisible at the exact moment people decide who to call.
Question 2 of 5
The money question
How much does [your main service] cost in [your city]? What's a fair price and what affects it?
Money questions are the most-asked questions before any purchase. "How much does a water heater replacement cost." "What does Botox run per unit." Every customer asks some version of this before they ever pick up the phone.
The AI quotes a realistic local range and names or cites a local business as its source, ideally yours. If the numbers trace back to a pricing page or article on YOUR website, you just became the town's authority on what things should cost.
National averages pulled from Forbes or HomeAdvisor, with no local business mentioned at all. Or a competitor's numbers, which means customers walk in anchored to somebody else's pricing and somebody else's name.
What it means for your pipeline: whoever the AI cites on price becomes the trusted default. The customer thinks "these are the people who were straight with me about money." That trust converts. If nobody local owns this answer in your market yet, it is sitting there waiting to be claimed.
Question 3 of 5
The vetting question
What should I look for when hiring a [your trade] in [your city]? What are the red flags?
This is the customer building their own scorecard before they start calling around. Whoever teaches them what "good" looks like quietly wins the comparison that follows.
The checklist the AI gives reflects things you actually do well (licensed, guarantees, reviews, response time), and best case, your business gets named as an example of a company that checks those boxes.
A generic national checklist with zero local names. Neutral sounding, but it means nobody in your market, including you, has published anything the AI considers worth citing. The field is wide open and nobody has taken it.
What it means for your pipeline: when the AI builds the buying criteria from your content, every box on the customer's checklist points back at you. They call you to confirm what they already believe. That's what a call that arrives half-sold actually is.
Question 4 of 5
The reputation question
What do people say about [your business name] in [your city]? Is it a good choice?
Here's a shift most owners miss: people who already have your name, from a referral, your truck, a yard sign, now vet you through AI before they call. This question is what they see.
An accurate summary. Right services, right service area, recent reviews reflected, and a confident "yes, this is a reputable choice."
"I don't have much information about that business." Or wrong details, an old address, services you don't offer, or the AI confusing you with a similarly named company two states over.
What it means for your pipeline: a referral is the warmest lead you'll ever get, and this is where warm leads go cold. Your friend's recommendation says call them, the AI shrugs, and the customer hesitates just long enough to call someone else. If the machine can't vouch for you, the gap between "heard your name" and "dialed your number" fills up with doubt.
Question 5 of 5
The emergency question
I need a [your trade] in [your city] today. Who should I call and what's their number?
The highest-intent moment that exists in your business. This person is not researching. They are buying within the hour.
Your business, your real phone number, maybe your hours. The AI just did your best salesperson's job for free.
A competitor's name and number, ready to tap. Or "here are some directories you could try," which sends a ready-to-buy customer back into the maze, where they'll click whoever paid the most to be found.
What it means for your pipeline: these are the easiest, most profitable jobs you'll ever win or lose, and they're decided in one answer. When the AI hands out your competitor's number at the moment of maximum urgency, you didn't lose the job. You never even existed for it.
The scoring rubric
Your score, in plain language
Count one point for each question where your business showed up the way it needed to.
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5/5
You own your market in AI. Genuinely rare, and worth protecting, because your competitors are coming for exactly this position. Your job now is to not lose it.
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4/5
You're the front-runner. One gap between you and owning every AI-assisted customer in town. Find it, patch it, done.
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3/5
It's a coin flip. Some of your future customers get your name, the rest get handed to a competitor. You're funding the growth of whoever wins the other half.
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2/5
You exist, but you're losing. The AI knows about you and still recommends other people. That's actually the most fixable position on this list, because the raw material is there. It just isn't working for you yet.
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1/5
You're invisible for the questions that matter. Your business is running on referrals and drive-bys while the fastest-growing source of new customers in your market routes around you.
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0/5
The AI doesn't know your business exists. Every single customer who asks AI who to call in [your city], and in 2026 that's a lot of them, is being handed to your competitors. The good news: from zero, everything you do from here shows up as growth.
Whatever you scored, write it down with today's date. This number moves, in both directions, and now you have a baseline. Most owners in your town have never checked theirs. You are already ahead of them just by knowing.
The next step
What to do with your score
You just ran 5 questions through 1 AI. Useful, but here's what I have to tell you straight: it's the shallow end of the pool.
Your real customers don't just use ChatGPT. They ask Perplexity. They get Google's AI answer whether they want it or not. And they don't ask tidy questions like the five above. They ask messy, specific, about-to-spend-money questions: "best [your trade] near me open Saturday," "cost of [specific job] in [your city]," "is it worth paying more for X."
That's what The AI Test is. For $19, my team and I ask Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the 5 questions YOUR customers actually ask in YOUR market. You get back, within 48 hours:
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Screenshots of every answer, so you see with your own eyes exactly who the AI recommends when your customers ask.
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Your AI-visibility score, one number that tells you where you stand today.
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The gap plan, the specific list of what's missing and what would move each answer in your favor.
Why is it only $19? I'll just say it plainly: it's a bribe. A shameless one. I want to show you exactly what we can see, because some of the owners who take this test will look at the gap plan and want us to run it for them, and that's the actual business Neuron HQ is in. It's not theory, either. We run this same engine on our own brands, Neuron HQ and Auto Advisor, publishing the cited posts and the long-form video and checking the citations every month, which is exactly how I know what moves these answers. If your results come back clean, you spent $19 to sleep well. If they come back ugly, you'll know precisely where the leak is and what it's costing you. Either way you win, and I get a shot at earning the bigger job. That's the whole play, out in the open.
And it's guaranteed, plainly: if the report doesn't show you something you didn't already know about your own market, tell me and I'll send your $19 back. No forms, no hoops, no hard feelings.
Or just reach out and say "run my test":
- Call or text: (385) 374-9295
- Email: support@neuron-hq.com
Once your report lands, if you want to talk through what it found, reply to the email or call me and we'll walk the gap plan together on a quick strategy call. No charge for the conversation.
Here's the feeling I want for you, because I've watched it happen on our own brands: the phone rings, and the person on the other end already trusts you, because the answer engine everyone asks told them you were the one. That's what being the obvious choice in town feels like, and right now, in most markets, that seat is still empty.