ChatGPT Is Giving Wrong Information About My Business: What to Do

If ChatGPT is giving wrong information about your business, you can’t edit its answer directly, but you can fix the sources it relies on. Document the wrong answer, find where it came from, correct your own website and structured data, update your profiles and directories, and ask third-party sources to fix errors. Then re-check over the following weeks.

The same approach works for Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews. This guide walks through why AI misinformation about a brand happens and exactly what to do about it.

Why is ChatGPT giving wrong information about my business?

AI assistants don’t look up your business in one official database. They build answers from what they learned during training and, when web search is used, from pages they retrieve at the time of the question. Errors usually come from one of these causes:

• Outdated sources. An old directory listing, a past press article or a stale social profile still shows your previous address, phone number or owner.
• Look-alike businesses. Another company with a similar name, perhaps in a different city, gets blended with yours. A “Green Leaf Café” in London and one in Dubai can easily be confused.
• Missing facts. If your website never clearly states your founding year, opening hours or service area, the model may fill the gap with a guess. This is what people usually mean by an AI hallucination about a business.
• Model knowledge vs web search. When an assistant answers from its training data alone, it may reflect how the web looked months or years ago. When it searches the web, it can pick up newer information, but only from pages it finds and trusts.
• Conflicting information. If your website says one thing and three directories say another, the assistant may pick the majority version, even if it’s wrong.

Answers also vary by engine, question wording, location, time and personalisation, so one person may see a wrong answer while another sees a correct one.

Can I just ask OpenAI to correct the answer?

Not in the way you might hope. There is no form where a business submits its “correct” facts and ChatGPT updates its answers. The practical route is to change the information the models draw on, and to use the feedback options inside the apps to flag bad answers. Feedback is useful, but it’s not a guaranteed correction, so don’t rely on it alone.

Step-by-step: how to correct a ChatGPT answer about your business

1. Document the wrong answer

Before changing anything, record what you saw. For each wrong answer, note:

• A screenshot of the full answer.
• The exact question you asked.
• The date and time.
• The engine and mode (for example, ChatGPT with web search, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews).
• Any sources or links shown with the answer.

Ask a few variations of the question too, such as “What is [brand]?”, “Where is [brand] located?” and “How do I contact [brand]?”. This shows whether the error is consistent or only appears for one wording. Keeping a simple log lets you prove later whether the fix worked.

2. Find the source it cited

If the answer includes citations, open each one. You’re looking for the page that contains the wrong fact. Often it’s an old directory entry, a review site profile, an outdated article or a page on your own site you’d forgotten about.

If there are no citations, search the web for the wrong detail itself, such as the old phone number in quotes. That frequently turns up the page that’s spreading it. Our guide to which websites ChatGPT cites explains the types of sources that tend to appear.

3. Fix your own website and structured data

Your website should be the clearest, most complete source of truth about your business. Check:

• Contact page, footer and About page all show the same name, address, phone, email and founding details.
• Old pages such as past promotions, closed locations or discontinued services are updated, redirected or clearly marked.
• Structured data uses schema.org Organization or the right LocalBusiness subtype with accurate address, telephone, openingHours, foundingDate and sameAs links to your official profiles. Structured data must match what’s visible on the page.
• Missing facts are added. If assistants keep guessing something, state it plainly on your site, ideally in a short FAQ.

A connected brand knowledge graph makes these facts easy for machines to read and link together.

Also check that AI search crawlers can reach your site. Blocking crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot or Bingbot can keep your corrected pages out of AI search answers. Blocking training crawlers like GPTBot doesn’t remove you from AI search, but blocking the search crawlers does.

4. Fix your profiles and directories

Consistent NAP (name, address, phone) across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and directories helps engines match one business. Work through:

1. Google Business Profile, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect.
2. Major directories and review sites in your country and industry.
3. Social profiles such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
4. Industry associations, chambers of commerce and partner listings.

Claim listings you don’t control yet, correct the details, and request removal of duplicates where the platform allows it.

5. Ask third-party sources to correct errors

If a news site, blog, “best of” list or forum post carries the wrong fact, contact the owner. Keep it short and specific: what’s wrong, what’s correct, and a link to your official page that confirms it. Be polite and factual; many publishers will update an obvious error such as an old phone number or address.

6. Use the feedback options in the AI apps

Most AI assistants offer a way to rate or report an answer, often a thumbs-down or similar option. Use it on the wrong answer and explain briefly what’s incorrect. The exact options differ between apps and change over time, and none of them promise that a specific answer will change, but it’s a low-effort step worth taking.

7. Re-check over several weeks

Fixes take time to show. Pages must be recrawled, directories must update, and assistants that rely on training data may keep older information longer. Re-ask the same questions you logged in step 1, on the same engines, every week or two. Record whether the answer changed and which sources are now cited. Our guide to measuring AI visibility improvements covers how to track this properly.

What if the wrong information is damaging?

Most errors are simple mistakes: an old phone number, wrong hours, a mixed-up founder. Occasionally an AI answer may repeat something seriously harmful, such as a false claim of fraud or a crime. In that case, document everything carefully, focus on finding and correcting the underlying source, and consider speaking to a qualified lawyer in your country about whether defamation or other legal options apply. This article isn’t legal advice, and the rules differ widely between jurisdictions.

How to prevent AI misinformation about your brand in future

• Keep one master list of your core business facts and update it first whenever anything changes.
• Update your website, structured data and main profiles on the same day when you move, rebrand or change numbers.
• Give your business a distinctive, consistent name across the web to reduce confusion with look-alikes.
• Monitor what AI assistants say about you regularly, not only when a customer complains. See our guide to AI reputation management.

How Onxeera helps

Onxeera’s AI Reputation tool asks AI engines brand questions like “What is X?” and “How can I contact X?”, shows whether they recognise you, and flags wrong phone numbers, websites, emails or founding years compared with your Brand Knowledge profile, along with the quote and the sources cited. That gives you the evidence for steps 1 and 2 in one place. The Brand Knowledge tool then helps you keep one fact profile, check your site for conflicts and output a connected schema.org JSON-LD graph.

No tool can force an AI to change an answer. What you can do is make the correct facts easy to find, consistent everywhere, and checked regularly.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take for ChatGPT to show corrected information?

There is no fixed timeline. Answers that use web search can change once the corrected pages are recrawled, which may take days or weeks. Answers that rely on training data may keep older information until the model is updated. Re-check regularly and log what you see.

Does the thumbs-down button fix wrong answers about my business?

Feedback options let you flag a bad answer to the AI company, and it is worth using them. However, no assistant promises that feedback will change a specific answer. Treat it as one step alongside fixing your website, structured data, profiles and the third-party sources the AI relies on.

Why does ChatGPT confuse my business with another company?

This usually happens when two businesses share a similar name, or when your own facts are thin or inconsistent across the web. Clear structured data, sameAs links to your official profiles, consistent NAP details and a distinctive name all help AI engines tell your business apart from look-alikes.

Is the same fix needed for Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews?

Yes, largely. All of these engines draw on web sources, so correcting your website, structured data, directory listings and third-party pages helps across them. Each engine retrieves and weighs sources differently, though, so check each one separately and record its answers and citations.