Is AI describing your business correctly?
Ask an assistant what your company does, then ask whether it is legitimate. Read both answers as a customer would, and click every source it cites.
Being described as the wrong business is worse than being absent — and unlike being absent, nothing warns you. The usual cause is not your website. It is your address.
Anyone registered at an address they share.
A registered agent, a virtual suite, a shared office, a co-working space, an accountant's address. All normal, all legal, and all of them mean the single strongest signal of who you are is held in common with companies you have never heard of.
If one of those companies has a name close to yours, a machine answering “who is this business” has very little to go on. It does not tell you it is guessing.
Five steps. The third one is the number that matters.
Ask what your company does, by name
Open any assistant and ask it to describe your company. Read it as a customer would. Note anything that is not yours: a service you do not offer, a city you do not work in, a complaint you have never had.
Then ask whether you are legitimate
This is where it breaks. A suspicion-framed question sends the machine looking for corroboration, and where corroboration is thin it reaches for whoever looks nearest. Ask it, and ask what it is basing the answer on.
Read the sources it cites
Click every one. The question that matters is simple: how many of them are actually yours? If the answer is none, the machine is describing you using somebody else's material, and that is the whole problem in one number.
Look up your own registration record
Read the address exactly as filed, suite number included. Then search that address on its own and see which other companies publish it. A registered agent or virtual suite is normal and legal, and it means your strongest identity signal is shared.
Compare every place you publish that address
Your website, your Google profile, your directory listings, your invoices, your email footer. A machine treats two spellings as two businesses, so Ste 110 and Suite 110 are not the same company to it.
Six causes, and they compound.
A shared address
Registered agents, virtual suites and shared offices put several unrelated companies at one street address. Entity resolution leans heavily on address, so two businesses at one address are one business to a machine until something separates them.
A name one word away
“Ultimate” and “Unlimited”. “Group” and “Partners”. Search engines openly substitute near-matches and will tell you so, and an assistant inherits that substitution without flagging it.
An address that disagrees with itself
A suite number on the state filing, a different one on the map listing, none at all in the website footer. Each variant is a candidate business, and the machine picks.
Thin corroboration
The real multiplier. When little third-party material about you exists, the gap gets filled by whatever is nearest in the data. A business with reviews, a profile and directory listings is hard to confuse; a business with none is easy.
Nothing notifies you
There is no alert, no dashboard and no appeal. The answer is simply wrong, to everyone who asks, until somebody happens to look. Most owners find out from a customer.
A regulated neighbour makes it worse
If the company you are confused with sits in a category that attracts complaints, you inherit the caution rather than just the confusion. That is worse than being invisible, because it actively costs you a buyer who had already found you.
Twelve sources cited. None of them ours.
On 2 October 2026 we asked an engine whether our own company was legitimate. It could not find us, filled the gap with similarly named firms in other trades, cited twelve sources and advised caution. Not one of the twelve belonged to us.
The cause was an address. Our registered address was a shared suite, and another company there has a name one word from ours in a category that attracts complaints. The machine had merged the two.
We changed the registered address on 6 October. On 9 October we put the same questions to the same engines: the contamination was gone from both brand answers.
And the part worth being straight about. We are still named in none of the twenty category questions we track. Clearing a wrong answer stopped the machine saying something false about us. It did not get us recommended anywhere, because that needs third-party evidence and three days does not build any. The full method and the numbers are published here.
The honest limits.
This is not a content problem
You cannot write your way out of it. Publishing more pages about yourself while the entity is ambiguous adds volume to a machine that has already decided you are somebody else.
The fix is not one edit
It is every public record agreeing at once: the state filing, the map profile, the directories, the site and its markup. Change one and you add a variant. Change all of them and you give the machine a single answer.
Then you wait
Engines re-read on their own schedule. Our own measured case took three days to clear from one engine's answers, and that was fast.
Clearing a wrong answer does not produce a right one
Worth saying plainly because we measured it. Removing the confusion stopped the machine saying something false about us and did not by itself get us named anywhere. Those are two separate jobs.
One answer, published everywhere, at the same time.
Treat your state filing as the authority, because it is the record every other source was supposed to copy. Read it exactly as filed, suite number included.
Then make everything else match it to the character. Your website footer and your structured data — check what your markup actually says — your map profile, your directory listings, your email signature, your invoices. Every variant you leave behind is another candidate business.
If the address itself cannot distinguish you because a near-namesake publishes it too, changing the address is a legitimate fix and usually the strongest one available. It is also the one nobody suggests, because it sounds drastic next to editing a page.
Then stop and wait. Engines re-read when they choose, and the temptation to keep editing is how you end up with six variants instead of one.
An unambiguous business is the floor, not the goal.
Being correctly described means a machine can tell who you are. Being recommended means it has reason to name you when a customer asks who to hire, and that depends on third-party evidence built over months.
That is the work we do. We publish how we test it, including the questions where we come back empty, on our methodology page, and prices are on the pricing page.
What owners ask about this.
How do I check whether AI is describing my business correctly?
Ask an assistant two questions: what your company does, by name, and then whether it is legitimate. Read the answers as a customer would, then click every source it cites and count how many are actually yours. If none of them are, the machine is describing you from somebody else's material. That takes about two minutes and it is the single most useful thing you can do before spending money on visibility work.
Why would an AI confuse my business with another one?
Usually because you share an address. Entity resolution leans heavily on street address, so a registered agent, virtual suite or shared office puts your strongest identity signal in common with companies you have nothing to do with. Add a name within a word or two of yours and a machine has no reliable way to tell you apart, particularly if little third-party material about either of you exists.
Is using a registered agent address a mistake?
No. It is normal, legal and often sensible. The risk is specific: it means the address cannot distinguish you, so everything else has to. If you use one, the work is making sure your name, phone, categories and third-party listings are consistent and plentiful enough to carry the identity on their own.
I found a wrong answer. What do I actually do?
Stop publishing and start reconciling. Read your state filing and treat it as the authority, then make every public record match it to the character: your website and its structured data, your map profile, your directory listings, your email footer. If the address itself is the problem because it is shared with a near-namesake, changing it is a legitimate fix and usually the strongest single one available.
How long does it take to clear?
Weeks is the honest answer, because engines re-read when they choose. We have one measured case of our own where a specific contamination disappeared from an engine's answers three days after the underlying record changed, and we would not promise that as typical.
Does this affect Google search too, or only AI answers?
Both, and it tends to show up in AI answers first. A search result gives a reader ten links and lets them sort it out. An assistant writes one answer with no list underneath, so a merged entity produces a single confident wrong description instead of a page the reader can scan and correct for themselves.
Can I just ask the AI company to fix it?
There is no meaningful route for that, and chasing one is a poor use of your time. Assistants describe what the web says about you. The leverage is in changing what the web says, which you control, rather than in the engine's output, which you do not.
Do you fix this for people?
Yes, it is part of what the AI Visibility work covers, because an ambiguous entity makes everything else pointless. We publish how we test it, including the questions where we are not named ourselves, on our methodology page.
What is an entity?
What an assistant understands your business to be: a name, an address, a phone number and a category, tied together consistently enough that it treats them as one thing. Conflicting details across the web are the usual reason a business is described wrongly.
Related: How to get recommended by ChatGPT · Structured data validator · Our methodology · About us
By Steven Allbright, founder, Ultimate Elite Solutions · Last updated: 2026-10-09