AI keeps mixing my business up with another one. What can I do?

What a mix-up looks like

You ask ChatGPT or Gemini about your business and the answer is half right. It knows your name, but gives someone else's phone number. It describes services you don't offer, or quotes a review you recognise from a rival with a similar name. Sometimes it puts you in the wrong town altogether, or says you've closed when it's another business with a similar name that closed.

This is different from an assistant having old facts about you, like last year's opening hours. That's covered on our wrong information page. Here, the problem is that the assistant isn't sure which business is which.

Why it happens

Assistants build their picture of a business from what they find written about it. Confusion is likely when:

• two businesses share a common name ("Smith & Sons", "The Coffee House") in the same area;
• one business took over another's premises or phone number;
• a directory has merged two listings, or a listing still shows a previous owner;
• your website title says only your name, without your town or what you do;
• you've changed name and the old one is still around on other sites.

Five steps to separate yourself

1. Write down exactly what gets mixed up. Note the question, the assistant, the date, and which details belong to the other business: address, phone, reviews, services or owner.
2. Find the other business. Search for the name the assistant used. Note its town, website and listings so you can see where the overlap comes from.
3. Make your own details unmistakable. Use your full trading name, town and what you do together in your website title, Google Business Profile and listings, and keep them identical.
4. Clean up listings that blur the two. Look for duplicate or merged listings, old names and directory entries with the wrong phone or address, and correct or report them.
5. Re-check after a few weeks. Ask the same questions in clean chats and compare. Changes can take time and differ between assistants.

The third step does most of the work. A made-up example: "Example Electrical, electricians in Stamford" is far harder to confuse than "Example" on its own. Use the same wording on your site's home page title, your Google Business Profile and the main directories you're listed on.

What to expect

Nobody outside the AI companies controls what their assistants say, so no one can promise when a mix-up will stop. Assistants that look things up on the web may reflect cleaner listings sooner; what an assistant learnt in training changes only when the model is updated. Our answer on how long changes take explains that in more detail.

If the mix-up is costing you enquiries and you'd like help finding every source, the audit traces what each assistant says across 25 questions and lists what to fix first.