How to fix wrong business details that AI assistants repeat
When ChatGPT repeats the wrong address, hours or phone number for a business, fix the sources it reads. A step-by-step guide and a service your AI agency sells.
A physiotherapy clinic moved across town eighteen months ago. New sign, new website, new address on Google. Last week a new patient rang to say she was outside the old building. She'd asked an AI assistant for "a physio near me that does sports massage", and it gave her the clinic's name with the old street.
The owner calls the one-person AI agency that built the site. "Can you fix what ChatGPT says about us?"
The honest answer is no, not directly. There's no form where you edit an assistant's reply. What you can do is fix the places the assistant reads from, so the right details are the only ones it can find. That means asking the question a customer would ask, opening the sources the answer links to, correcting the wrong detail at each source, and checking again later with the date written down. It's patient, unglamorous work, and it's something you can offer a client honestly.
How do I correct wrong information AI gives about my business?
Work from the answer back to its sources. In order:
- Ask the question a customer would. Not "what is the clinic's address", but "a physio near the station that does sports massage". Try two or three wordings.
- Write down the answer, the assistant, and the date.
- Open every source it links to. Find the one with the wrong detail.
- Fix it at the source, starting with the places you or the owner control.
- Look for the same mistake elsewhere. Old details rarely live in only one place.
- Ask again in a few weeks, with the same questions, and write down what changed.
The rest of this guide goes through each step.
Where do AI assistants get business details?
From what they can find, and sometimes from what they learned earlier.
When ChatGPT searches the web, OpenAI's announcement of ChatGPT search (October 2024) says it uses third-party search providers as well as content from its partners, and that answers include links to the sources. So the links under an answer are your best clue. If the old address comes with a link to a directory listing from three years ago, that listing is the thing to fix.
When an assistant answers without searching, it may be drawing on what it learned before, which can be out of date. You can't correct that directly. You can make sure that the next time it looks, every source agrees.
This is also why the work overlaps so much with ordinary local search. The same listings that decide what Google shows are the ones assistants tend to read. GEO vs SEO covers where the two differ and where they're the same job.
How do I find which source is wrong?
Keep a short record as you go. It makes the fix faster and gives the client something to read.
| What to note | Example |
|---|---|
| The question | Physio near the station that does sports massage |
| The assistant and date | Assistant one, 7 August |
| The wrong detail | Old address on Mill Street |
| The sources linked | A health directory, an old news article, the clinic's own site |
| Where the wrong detail sits | The directory listing and a page on the clinic's site about the opening |
Two things turn up again and again. The first is an old page on the business's own website: a "we're opening" news post, a PDF price list, a contact page that was copied and never deleted. The second is a directory or review site that took the details once and never updated them.
It's the same habit you'd use when your agent gets a client fact wrong: trace the fact back to where it came from before you correct it.
What should I fix first?
The sources the business controls, then the big listings, then everything else.
The business's own website. Search the whole site for the old address, phone number and hours, including old posts and PDFs. Put the current details on the contact page and in the footer, as text rather than inside an image, so they can be read. Delete or update pages that describe the old situation. If a page must stay, add a line at the top with the current details.
Google Business Profile. The owner, or someone they've given access, can edit the profile directly. Google's help page says it reviews changes before they go live, so allow a little time. Check the address, phone, website link, hours and the business category.
Bing Places for Business. Microsoft's free service for managing how a business appears in Bing search results and Bing Maps. Bing's October 2025 announcement says it can import listings from Google, which saves typing, but check every field after the import. Many small businesses have never claimed their Bing listing at all.
Listings the business doesn't manage. For duplicates or old entries on Google Maps, anyone can suggest an edit, and Google Maps Help says that feedback helps Google decide whether to change a place's information. Mark an old location as moved or closed rather than leaving two.
Directories and profiles. Industry directories, local business associations, review sites, social media profiles. Update the ones you can log in to. For the rest, most have a "suggest a change" or contact form.
Old articles. A local newspaper story about the opening won't be changed, and doesn't need to be. It becomes less of a problem once everything around it agrees.
How long until AI answers change?
Nobody can tell you, and you shouldn't promise a date. Each assistant works differently, and sources are read again on their own schedules.
What you can do is measure. Keep the same three questions. Ask them every few weeks, in the same assistants, and write down the date and what each one said. After two or three rounds you'll see whether the old address is fading, which assistants still use it, and which source they still link to.
That record matters for another reason: it's the honest way to show a client the work was worth it. "On 7 August, two of three assistants gave the old address. On 18 September, one did, and it linked to a directory we've asked to update." That's a report a client can trust, and one that promises nothing you can't see.
Can I sell this as a service?
Yes, as long as you sell the work and not a result.
A sensible shape is a one-off clean-up followed by a small monthly check:
- The clean-up: find every place the business's details appear, fix the ones you can, request fixes for the rest, and send a list of what changed.
- The monthly check: the same questions in the same assistants, with the answers and dates recorded, plus any listing that has drifted.
Write the service down once, including what you check, how often and what the client receives, as a service recipe, so every month is done the same way. When you report, describe what you saw, not a ranking: an AI visibility report shows how to word that. If you already sell local search work, this fits beside it, and the page for marketers selling local services shows how those services sit together. For the full list of what you can offer a client after the website, see services to sell after the website.
Fixing the sources won't make an assistant recommend the business. It does mean that when an assistant mentions it, the patient ends up at the right door.