Mathew PaquetChecklist · 4 min read
The Ten-Minute Free AI Check
See what the free AI your customers actually use says about your business, what sits under that answer, and which AI to pay for on your team.
When you check what AI says about a business, you probably check on the plan you pay for. Your customer probably doesn't.
According to a16z, the venture firm, only about 3% of Americans paid for ChatGPT in August 2026, from a panel of U.S. receipt and card data. Across ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude together, about 4.5%. (a16z invests in this market, so keep that in mind.)
The free version is a different product in two ways:
OpenAI says ads don't influence ChatGPT's answers. Take that at face value. But as far as I can find, nobody has published whether the free model names different businesses than the paid one. That is why you check, on the version your customers use.
The ad doesn't change the answer. It changes what sits right under it.Three checks, about ten minutes. Run it on your own business or a client's.
Is [YOUR BUSINESS NAME] any good?
What does [YOUR MAIN SERVICE] cost in [CITY]?
Example: a roofer in Columbus asks "Who is the best roofer in Columbus?" and "What does a new roof cost in Columbus?"
Run the check once a month, so you notice when a sponsored box shows up. Since May 2026, any U.S. business can buy ChatGPT ads itself, with no minimum. Google is testing sponsored ads inside AI Mode's recommendation lists.
Question: [QUESTION, WORD FOR WORD]
App and account: [CHATGPT FREE / CHATGPT PAID / AI MODE / GEMINI / CLAUDE]
Were we named? [YES / NO]
Who else was named: [NAMES]
Sponsored box under the answer? [YES / NO, AND WHOSE AD]
Sources the answer cited: [LINKS]
One study of more than a hundred brands, by a company that sells this kind of tracking, found about 78% of the sources AI engines cited were the companies' own websites. So click the sources under each answer.
Watch for old pages. If the answer is built from an old directory listing or someone else's review page, that page describes you to most of your customers.
If the free answer is thin on you, the fix usually starts on your own site. Check that it says three things plainly:
The same a16z report shows who pays. The top 1% of payers account for 19.5% of the consumer AI spending it could see, more than the bottom half combined. Those top payers spend about $903 a month on average. The typical payer spends $25.
Your team likely has the same shape: one or two heavy users, everyone else using AI a little, if at all. So don't buy everyone everything:
Not because free is bad. On a free account, your team sees ads, and by default its chats can be used to train the models. OpenAI says it doesn't train on business plan data by default.
Tools they asked for: [TOOLS]
Everyone else: [NUMBER OF PEOPLE] on one business plan: [PLAN NAME]
Sources
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Open a free ChatGPT account this week, ask for the best business like yours in your city, and note whether you were named and whether a sponsored box sat under the answer.
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