Profit Acuity's test of 83 repeated ChatGPT local-business queries found zero identical answer lists, showing why owners should track appearance frequency across repeated questions rather than trust a single response.
-- Profit Acuity reports that a test of 83 repeated local-business recommendation questions asked of ChatGPT turned up zero matching answer lists. The company ran identical wording twice on the same day across 11 window-replacement markets, then compared the two results pair by pair, finding that none of the 83 pairs produced the exact same set of companies. Profit Acuity says this finding should change how business owners judge whether ChatGPT recommends them.
The full data set, including the 123-city breakdown, is in the report Does ChatGPT Give Everyone the Same Answer?, which also shows that the first company named matched on only 18 of 83 repeat questions.
The variation traces back to how ChatGPT generates responses rather than retrieving a fixed ranking. OpenAI's own technical documentation notes that API outputs are non-deterministic by default, so identical requests can return different answers even when nothing else changes. Because of that built-in variability, an owner who asks ChatGPT about their business once, sees a favorable or unfavorable result, and treats that as settled fact is working from a single sample rather than a pattern.
The 83 pairs also showed some steadiness beneath the variation. The same company appeared first in only 18 of the 83 pairs, roughly a one-in-five chance of matching that top spot twice, yet the first-listed company from the original answer still turned up somewhere on the second list in 60 of the 83 pairs. That gap suggests simply being mentioned holds up better than holding a specific rank.
Profit Acuity ran the test through OpenAI's API with web search enabled rather than typing questions into the consumer ChatGPT app most customers use. That distinction matters because the app layers in memory and location features the API test did not include, meaning real customer interactions can vary even more than these 83 pairs demonstrated.
Two additional factors widen that gap further. OpenAI's Help Center notes that ChatGPT can draw on a user's approximate location, based on IP address, when answering local search queries. Separately, when Memory is turned on, the system can factor in details and preferences from a person's past conversations, so two customers in the same town typing the same question may see different company lists even without any randomness involved.
Given that spread, Profit Acuity recommends that business owners move away from single-answer checks. The company advises repeating real customer questions, worded the way customers actually ask them, multiple times, then tracking how often a business appears across those repeated answers rather than reacting to any one result. Appearance frequency, not a single pass-or-fail check, is the measure Profit Acuity points to as the more reliable signal of standing with ChatGPT.
Profit Acuity works with home service businesses, skilled trades, and healthcare and aesthetic practices across the United States on customer capture, conversion, and retention systems, including visibility with AI tools that customers consult when choosing who to hire. More information is available at the Authority Content System
Contact Info:
Name: Bryon Wenrich
Email: Send Email
Organization: Profit Acuity
Address: 2138 W Union Blvd #1047, Bethlehem, PA 18018, United States
Phone: +1-610-936-6839
Website: https://profitacuity.com/authority-content-system/
Source: NewsNetwork
Release ID: 89209596
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