ChatGPT has wrong information about my business. How do I fix it?

There is no form where a business owner can ask OpenAI to change what ChatGPT says about them. What you can change is the material it reads. When ChatGPT searches the web, it builds its answer from pages and listings it finds, and those are pages you own or can get corrected. When it answers without searching, it is repeating what it absorbed in training, and that only changes slowly. So the order is always the same: find the source, fix the source, report the answer, then re-test on a schedule.

This guide covers ChatGPT first, then the same problem in Google’s AI Overviews, because owners usually find both at once.

Why does ChatGPT have wrong information about my business?

Almost always because somewhere on the web, the wrong fact is written down and looks credible. ChatGPT is not inventing your old phone number; it is reading it from an old directory listing, a cached press article or your own website footer. Less often, it blends two businesses with similar names, or fills a gap with a guess when no source states the fact clearly.

The usual culprits, roughly in the order we check them:

• Your own websiteAn old “About” page, a footer with last year’s hours, a services page for something you stopped offering, a PDF price list still indexed.
• Your listingsGoogle Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and industry directories that disagree with each other.
• Other people’s pagesLocal news, “best of” roundups, old event pages, supplier sites or a previous owner’s profile still describing the business as it was.
• A name collisionAnother business with the same or a similar name, often in a different city, whose facts get attached to yours.
• A gapNothing online states the fact plainly (say, whether you take walk-ins), so the answer guesses.

Step 1: Work out where the answer came from

Open ChatGPT, ask the question that produced the wrong answer, and look at what comes back. If the answer shows source links or a “Sources” panel, it ran a web search and you can open each source. If it shows none, the answer probably came from the model’s training data. Ask a second time with “search the web” added to the prompt and compare. Our clean-chat test for ChatGPT recommendations explains how to set up a test that isn’t skewed by your own chat history.

Then do the boring but decisive part: open every cited source and use your browser’s find function (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) to search for the wrong value itself, such as the old phone number, the old street or the wrong price. The page that contains it is your target. If none of the cited pages contain it, search Google and Bing for the wrong value in quotes; it is usually sitting in a listing you forgot about.

Step 2: Fix the source, starting with what you control

Fix your own pages before anything else. They are the only sources you can change today, and a third-party site is more likely to update when your site clearly disagrees with it.

Your website

Put the corrected fact in plain text on a page that gets crawled: hours, address, phone, service area and the services you actually offer, on your contact or location page and in the footer. Don’t leave the only copy inside an image or a booking widget. If the error is something a reader could plausibly believe, say the opposite outright: “We are open and operating at 412 Elm Street” or “We no longer offer same-day delivery.” Delete or redirect pages for services you dropped, and remove old PDF menus and price lists from your server instead of just unlinking them.

Check your robots.txt too. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, so a blanket block set up by a developer or a security plugin can leave ChatGPT relying on everyone else’s version of you. The same page notes that a robots.txt change can take about 24 hours to take effect for search.

Your listings

Update your Google Business Profile (Edit profile, then Save; Google reviews edits before they go live), then Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and the two or three directories that matter in your industry. Make the name, address, phone and hours match character for character. If you use a call-tracking number on your website, decide which number is the “real” one and keep it on your listings; a mismatch is a common source of the “wrong phone number” complaint, and our guide to fixing a click-to-call button covers how tracking numbers get swapped in.

Other people’s pages

For news sites, roundups and directories you don’t control, send a short, specific correction request. Editors act on requests that are easy to verify:

1. Link the exact page and quote the incorrect line.
2. Give the correct fact and one link that proves it (your contact page or Google Business Profile).
3. Ask for a correction, not a new article.
4. Log the date you asked, and follow up once after two weeks.

If a site never answers, don’t chase it for months. Make sure the correct version is stated more clearly, on more credible pages, than the wrong one.

Step 3: Report the wrong answer

Reporting won’t fix anything by itself, but it is quick and it creates a record. In ChatGPT, use the thumbs-down under the response and describe the error briefly, including the correct fact and a link to your site.

For Google’s AI Overviews, Google’s AI Overviews help page describes the route: select the thumbs-down at the bottom of the overview, choose Report a problem, pick a category, add details and submit. The three-dot menu at the top right of the overview also opens feedback. Take a screenshot with the date before you report, so you have evidence if the problem keeps coming back.

If the wrong fact is on a Google Maps listing you don’t manage, such as an old listing at your address, Google’s Suggest an edit flow in Maps is the right tool. If it is your own profile, edit it directly instead of suggesting edits to it.

The worst one: AI says your business is closed

A false “permanently closed” costs real customers, so treat it as urgent. It has happened to businesses that did nothing wrong: in July 2026 Google’s AI Overview told searchers that Anna Mae’s Bakery in Ontario was closing, after mixing it up with a same-named bakery elsewhere, as reported by PinMeTo citing CBC. Google told CBC the mistake came from a gap in reliable information on the web.

Work through this in one sitting:

• Check the Google Business Profile status firstMake sure it isn’t marked temporarily or permanently closed. If you used “Temporarily closed” for a renovation or storm, reopen it; our hurricane closure guide covers which setting to use and how to switch back.
• Search for duplicatesAn old listing at a previous address, marked closed, is a frequent source of “they closed” answers.
• Say it on your homepageA plain line such as “Open 7am–3pm, Tuesday to Sunday, at our Main Street location” near the top.
• Post something datedA Google Business Profile post or a short news item with this month’s date gives a fresh signal that you are operating.
• Report every place you see itChatGPT, the AI Overview and any directory showing the closure.

When ChatGPT mixes you up with another business

Name collisions are the hardest case, because every source may be correct about its own business. Your job is to make it easy to tell the two apart. Use your full business name plus your city consistently, in the same form everywhere, state your location and founding year on your About page, and add LocalBusiness structured data with your exact name, address, phone and website. Our post on service area business schema shows how to keep that markup in step with your Business Profile. Link your website from every listing and your social profiles, and link back to them from your site, so the pieces point at each other.

Be realistic about schema. Google’s AI features documentation says there is no special markup or AI text file needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data helps by stating facts precisely; it is not a switch that makes an AI answer change.

How long until the answer changes?

It depends on where the answer came from, and nobody, OpenAI and Google included, publishes a guaranteed timeline. This is what to expect:

Keep a simple log: the question asked, the date, the platform, the wrong claim, the source you found, what you changed and when. It turns “AI keeps getting us wrong” into a list you can work through, and it is the evidence you need if a false claim starts to damage the business and you want legal advice.

Mistakes that make it worse

• Arguing with the chatbot. Telling ChatGPT it is wrong in your own chat may change that conversation, not what other people see.
• Creating a new listing instead of fixing or claiming the old one. Now there are two versions of you.
• Fixing Google only. ChatGPT reads more than Google. Bing Places and your own site matter at least as much.
• Hiding the fix in an image, a pop-up or a booking widget that crawlers can’t read.
• Testing once. AI answers vary run to run. Ask the same question three times before deciding something is fixed or broken.

Where to start this week

Spend an hour on it. Ask ChatGPT and Google five plain questions about your business (hours, address, phone, what you offer, whether you’re open), screenshot anything wrong, and trace each error to a page using the find-the-wrong-value method above. Fix your own site and your local SEO listings the same day, report each wrong answer, and put a weekly re-test in your calendar for the next month.

If the trail goes cold, or the wrong answer is costing you calls, ask us for a free visibility audit and we’ll trace it with you.