If Google's AI Overview shows the wrong hours for your business, ask it the same question on 3 different days and compare the answer with every place your hours are published. A listing that repeats the same disputed hours is worth checking, but the match doesn't show where the engine got them. I ran that test on a Dallas med spa. The Overview included a Saturday 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM window in all three runs, and a third-party directory listing showed the same window. The med spa's homepage listed Saturday as by appointment only. The first fix I recommended was to make the Saturday hours identical everywhere they appear, then ask that directory to correct its listing.

This is one narrow case of GEO for small businesses: an engine names you and gets a fact wrong.

What I tested

The sample audit covered one real med spa in Dallas, Texas. It isn't a client and nobody commissioned the audit, so it stays anonymous.

I asked the same 10 questions on Friday 23, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October 2026, typed the same way each day, in a new chat or search, with no follow-up questions. Eight were general questions a new client might ask. Two asked about the med spa by name: what it's known for, and its address, phone number and opening hours.

ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews ran in signed-out browser sessions and answered on all 3 days. Claude ran once, on 25 October, through a signed-in Claude Code account in command line mode with web search on, from a PC in Bulgaria. That setup may differ from the Claude app. Perplexity and Gemini couldn't be used signed out, so they have no results.

I checked the facts in the by-name answers against the med spa's own website. I didn't open the Google Business Profile itself.

What each engine got right by name

All three engines that returned answers named the med spa on every by-name question.

These scores cover the facts I checked against the business website, mostly using the 23 October check as the baseline. Details I couldn't verify were left out, so a passing answer wasn't necessarily verified in full.

  1. ChatGPT: 6 of 6 answers matched the website on the facts checked.
  2. Google AI Overviews: 3 of 6. "Known for" matched on 3 of 3 runs. For address, phone and hours, 0 of 3 answers fully matched the website, because Saturday differed.
  3. Claude: 2 of 2 on its single run, counting the facts that could be checked.

The AI Overview's wrong hours were on Saturday

Google's AI Overview included a Saturday window of 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM in all three runs. The answer from the 24 October run also said "or by appointment only". The address, the phone number and the weekday hours matched the website. The homepage baseline listed Saturday as by appointment only.

The same 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM window appeared on a third-party directory listing. That match doesn't show where the Overview got it. On Friday, the Overview's source card for the hours answer was the Google business listing plus an inline link to the business website. Google's search snippet for the med spa's own contact page showed a third Saturday time. So the business's own web presence wasn't consistent either.

ChatGPT gave Saturday as by appointment only in all three runs. Friday's answer cited the contact page. My notes for the Saturday and Sunday runs record links to the business website. Claude's single answer said "by appointment only" and pointed out, without being asked, that two directory listings say Saturday 11 to 4.

What the site's own code said

Structured data is a block of code that hands search engines and AI tools the business name, address, phone and hours in a fixed format. On 22 October 2026 the med spa's homepage had this:

  1. Type: LocalBusiness.
  2. Business name: misspelled, with the words run together.
  3. Address: street, city, state and ZIP present, suite number missing.
  4. Phone: missing.
  5. Opening hours: missing.
  6. A second block, WebSite: name shortened to one word.

The 22 October robots.txt check found a sitemap declaration and no explicit block for the AI crawlers the sample looked at. One unrelated search crawler was blocked.

One place the engine could have read the right hours was empty. This sample didn't prove that the gap caused the wrong Overview answer. A code-only check of 50 Texas med spa homepages is in What 50 med spa websites tell AI engines about themselves.

Directory pages showed up as sources

In three of Claude's linked answers, the links went to directory or booking pages about the med spa instead of its own website. For "best med spas in Dallas", ChatGPT's sources on Friday were directory sites and Google.

The fix list from the report

Seven recommendations from the sample report, in the report's order. The last one is reworded as a check, because the team page already named both co-owners.

  1. Owner: make the Saturday hours the same on the homepage, the contact page, the Google Business Profile and the directory listings. Then ask the directory showing 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM to correct it.
  2. Developer: correct the business name in the LocalBusiness structured data so it matches the sign and the Google profile letter for letter.
  3. Developer: add the phone number, the opening hours (matching fix 1) and the suite number to the LocalBusiness structured data.
  4. Developer: change the WebSite structured data name from the one-word short form to the full business name.
  5. Owner: check the listing on each directory ChatGPT used as a source for "best med spas in Dallas", and add or correct it.
  6. Owner: check how Google's Overview describes the ownership. I couldn't find that description on the pages I checked. If it's right, say it on the team page. If it's wrong, check the cited pages and other public listings, and correct any inaccurate ownership description you find.
  7. Content: check whether both co-owners' names and roles are on the site as text a crawler can read. ChatGPT described only one of them as a co-owner.

I didn't apply these recommendations or run an after-fix check, so I can't report whether the Overview changed.

How to check AI answers about your own business

  1. Ask each engine, logged out, in a new chat or search: "What is the address, phone number and opening hours of [business] in [city]?" and "What is [business] in [city] known for?"
  2. Do it on 3 different days. Write down every fact and the source the answer shows.
  3. Compare what you wrote down with your website, your Google Business Profile and your directory listings. Mark every value that conflicts, next to the sources the answer cited.
  4. Check that your structured data carries the same name, address, phone and hours. Google's Rich Results Test or the page's source shows the LocalBusiness block.

The post on how to check whether ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews name your local business has a weekly routine.

Limits

One med spa, one city, three days, with one Claude run and no Perplexity or Gemini results. The sample doesn't show why an engine picked a source. "Wrong" means the answer didn't match the website baseline, which mostly came from the 23 October check. Details I couldn't verify aren't in the scores. Google didn't consistently show Dallas as its location: two Saturday searches showed a town in Bulgaria, and another showed Illinois.

The AI Visibility Audit

If you run a local business in the US or UK, the AI Visibility Audit shows whether ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews name and recommend it, with screenshots, repeated tests and a ranked fix list. It runs every prompt 3 times in each engine, on 3 different days, with your city written into every prompt. The Full Audit includes a prioritized fix list split into owner, developer and content tasks. Nobody can guarantee a place in an AI answer, and the audit doesn't promise one. The Full Audit takes 3 business days and the Audit + Fix Kit takes 5, counted from the day after your intake answers arrive. Business days exclude weekends and bank holidays in England and Wales.