I Asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini to Recommend an AI Visibility Consultant — Here's What Happened

By Ali Culpepper | aliculpepper.com

If you sell a service, there's a question you should be asking right now:

When someone asks an AI tool to recommend someone who does what you do — do you come up?

I decided to find out. Not for a client. For myself.

I typed variations of the same prompt into four of the biggest AI tools — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini — and asked each one to recommend an AI visibility consultant. I wanted to see who they'd name, what they'd say, and whether I'd appear at all.

The results were eye-opening. And a little humbling.

The Experiment

I used four prompts across all four tools:

1. "Who are the best AI search visibility consultants right now?"
2. "I want to improve how my business shows up in AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity — who should I hire?"
3. "Recommend someone who specializes in GEO — Generative Engine Optimization"
4. "Who can help me get my business recommended by AI tools?"

I ran each prompt fresh, with no chat history, no prior context. Just a clean session and a question.

Here's what happened.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT was the most cautious of the four. For prompts 1 and 3, it declined to name specific individuals, saying its knowledge had a cutoff and it couldn't verify current practitioners. Instead, it described the type of person to look for — someone with an SEO background who had pivoted to understanding how large language models source and cite information.

For prompt 4, it got more specific and mentioned a handful of marketing agencies that had published content on GEO. No individual consultants by name. No mention of me.

Takeaway: ChatGPT defaults to describing expertise rather than naming people unless someone has significant published presence — think articles, studies, or quotes picked up by major publications.

Perplexity

Perplexity was the most interesting. Unlike ChatGPT, it actively searches the web in real time and cites its sources. This makes it the closest to a traditional search engine — and the most revealing about what actually exists online.

For prompts 1 and 2, Perplexity returned names and linked to their websites and LinkedIn profiles. The people it recommended had one thing in common: they had been quoted or mentioned in articles on marketing and SEO publications. Their names appeared in content that wasn't on their own sites.

For prompts 3 and 4, Perplexity surfaced a mix of agency blog posts and a few individual thought leaders who had published original research on how AI tools decide what to recommend.

I did not appear in any results.

Takeaway: Perplexity recommends people who exist outside their own website. If the only place your name appears is your homepage, Perplexity won't find you. You need to be quoted, cited, or mentioned elsewhere on the web.

Claude (Anthropic)

Claude was transparent about its limitations in a way the others weren't. It explicitly said it couldn't browse the web in real time and that its training data had a knowledge cutoff — so it was cautious about naming specific practitioners who might have emerged recently.

For prompts 1 and 3, it described the GEO space thoughtfully — explaining that it's an emerging discipline, that practitioners often come from SEO or content strategy backgrounds, and that the field is moving fast. But it wouldn't commit to specific names without more confidence in its data.

For prompt 2, it suggested searching for people who had published original research or frameworks — things like "the first person to publish a structured methodology for improving AI recommendation rates" — rather than just general SEO consultants who had rebranded.

No mention of me. Honestly, fair.

Takeaway: Claude rewards people who have created something original and documented — a framework, a methodology, a named approach. If you can be the person who invented something in your niche, even something small, Claude is more likely to surface you.

Gemini

Gemini behaved similarly to Perplexity in that it pulls from current web data, but it weighted different signals. It tended to recommend people associated with brands rather than individual consultants — agencies, publications, or named products.

For prompt 4 specifically, Gemini returned a mix of agency names and a few individual thought leaders who had YouTube presence or podcast appearances in addition to written content.

Again, no mention of me.

Takeaway: Gemini values multi-channel presence. Someone who writes AND appears on podcasts AND has video content is more likely to be surfaced than someone who only publishes blog posts.

What I Learned (And What It Means For You)

Running this experiment made a few things very clear.

AI tools don't recommend people based on how good their website is. They recommend people based on evidence scattered across the internet — quotes in articles, podcast appearances, original research, social media presence, and citations from other sources.

Your website is just one data point. And for many AI tools, it's a weak one.

The people who showed up in these results shared common traits:

• They had been mentioned or quoted by third-party publications
• They had published something original — a framework, a study, or a named methodology
• Their name appeared in multiple places across the web, not just their own site
• They had consistent, topic-specific content published over time

None of this is accidental. It's buildable. And it's what I help businesses do.

So Where Do You Stand?

After running this experiment on myself, I built a free tool to help you do the same — without having to manually test four AI platforms.

The AI Visibility Checker takes your business details and runs an analysis of how likely AI tools are to recommend you, what signals you're missing, and what prompts people might use to find someone like you.

It takes about 30 seconds and gives you a visibility score from 0–100 along with a specific list of gaps to fix.

Check your AI visibility for free →

Ali Culpepper is an AI search visibility consultant helping businesses understand and improve how they appear in AI-generated recommendations. Based in the US, working with clients globally.

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