Why AI says something wrong about your business
Four causes, and they need four different fixes. Guessing which one you have wastes months.
Usually one of four things: a prominent negative source is being retrieved, outdated information is being repeated because nothing newer is authoritative, your business is being confused with a similarly named one, or the model is filling gaps because almost nothing verifiable about you exists. Each has a different fix, so diagnosing before acting matters.
The four causes
- A prominent hostile source. One article or listing dominates and gets cited. Fix: address the source. See how to remove false information from ChatGPT.
- Stale information. An old ownership, address, service or price persists because nothing current is clearly published. Fix: publish current, dated, structured facts on your own site.
- Entity confusion. Another business with a similar name is being merged with yours. Fix: strengthen entity signals so the two are distinguishable.
- Thin ground truth. Almost nothing verifiable exists, so the model generalises. Fix: publish enough specific, attributable material for it to have something to hold.
Diagnosing which one you have
Ask several assistants the same question and compare. If they all cite the same page, you have a source problem. If they contradict each other, you probably have thin ground truth. If details from another company appear, it is entity confusion.
Ask the assistant to name its sources. It is not always accurate about this, but across several attempts the pattern is informative.
Ask three assistants the same question. Where they agree, there is a source. Where they diverge, there is a vacuum.
Entity confusion is the most fixable
If a model is blending you with another business, the fix is structural rather than editorial: consistent name, address and phone across the web, complete organisation schema on your site, clear disambiguating language, and consistent linking between your properties.
This work is unglamorous and reliably effective, and it improves conventional search at the same time. It is also the reason we publish a specific address and structured organisation data on our own site rather than leaving it implicit.
Common questions
Should I contact the AI company?
Worth doing for clear factual errors about a person or business, and not a substitute for fixing the source, which is what changes the answer generally.
Does schema markup help?
Yes, particularly for entity confusion and factual details. It gives systems a machine-readable version of the facts rather than leaving them to inference.
How often should I check?
Monthly for most businesses, and weekly during or after any incident that generated coverage.
Find out if it can come down.
The scan is free and confidential. You get a viability answer on each item, a fixed price, and a timeline. Anything accepted and still published at 14 days is refunded in full.
Run a free scanMore on ai answers and assistants
Working through this for a business? See Removal-first reputation management.