Ask four AIs the same question. You get four different lists.

Last month I asked four AIs the same three questions, over and over.

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok. Eight trades: estate agents, contractors, roofers, kitchens, bathrooms, window frames, solar and heat pumps, mortgage advisers. Three Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Utrecht and Haarlem. Web search on, questions in Dutch, the way a local customer would ask them.

I expected them to mostly agree. They don't.

Between them, they named 723 businesses. 465 of those were named by just one of the four AIs. Only 41 were named by all four.

One city, one trade

Take estate agents in Haarlem. Questions like "best selling agent in Haarlem" and "I want to sell my house and need an agent with good reviews who knows the area".

The four AIs named 41 agents. 27 of them came from only one AI. Three were named by all four.

Kitchens in Haarlem looked tighter: 16 names, and one shop, Keur Keukens, showed up in 11 of the 12 answers. That's rare. Most pages look more like the estate agents.

What that means for you

It means "does AI recommend me?" isn't one question. It's four. Maybe more.

You can be the name Claude gives and not exist for ChatGPT. A customer who uses Gemini gets a different shortlist than their neighbour who uses Grok. Same street, same question, different answer.

That's a bit unsettling. It's also good news.

If the four AIs agreed on one fixed top five, getting in would feel impossible. They don't agree. The lists are loose. Most businesses on them got there with one AI, not four. There's room.

Check all four, not one

If you've asked ChatGPT about your business once and it didn't name you, don't stop there. And if it did name you, don't celebrate yet.

Ask the questions your customers ask. Ask more than one AI. Then look at who they name instead of you.

That's what the free scan on foreground.info does, for the questions of your own niche.

Four AIs. Four lists. Find out which ones you're on.

— Marc.