Does ChatGPT recommend your software? How to check, and what decides it

What the assistants answered

We asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity two buyer questions for three software categories (“What are the best options for…” and “Which… have the best customer reviews?”), on 15 October 2026. That is 6 answers per category. The names that came back most often:

For software, the assistants agree much more than for local businesses. In each category, the two leaders were named in 5 or 6 of the 6 answers. In our study of local businesses, 81% of the businesses recommended were named by only one of the three assistants. For a newcomer, that means a short list that is hard to enter, not a lottery.

The sites they read

The pages the assistants cited most across these 18 answers were review and comparison articles: TechRadar (6 answers), Forbes (6), PCMag (4), Zapier (4), NerdWallet (3) and ZDNet (2).

The second group is more surprising: software vendors' own “best tools” articles. Pages from Wrike, ProofHub, Teamwork, Bonsai, Plutio, BigTime and Hubstaff were each cited in 2 or 3 answers. A vendor that publishes a clear, honest comparison of its category gets read by the assistants, and sometimes named in the answer.

We saw the same in our study of AI visibility tools: the tools that come up are the ones other sites write about.

How to check your own product

1. Open the free check and enter your website. PickableAI reads your home page and suggests your product name and category.
2. Click “My customers are everywhere (online)”: no city is needed.
3. Check the category. Write it the way a buyer would type it (“invoicing software for freelancers”, not “financial workflow platform”).
4. The check asks Perplexity four questions without a city: the best options, a trustworthy choice, the best customer reviews, and one you can use online from anywhere. You see whether your product is named, in which position, and which products are named instead.

Paid plans ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity every week, with your own questions (for example “best invoicing software for UK freelancers”), and show the sites the assistants rely on.

What to do if you are not named

1. Name your category in plain words on your home page: what the product is, who it is for, in the words buyers use. The assistants match those words to the question.
2. Get into the comparison articles of your category. Look at the sources shown under the answers: those exact pages are where the names come from.
3. Publish your own honest comparison of the category, including competitors where they are better. The assistants read vendors' comparisons too.
4. Collect reviews on the platforms of your market (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, app marketplaces). The “best customer reviews” question is answered from them.
5. Measure again after a few weeks. Answers move: one check is a snapshot, not a verdict.