We checked the five GEO providers ChatGPT recommended. Here's what the list didn't say.
Ask ChatGPT who does GEO in your market and you get a tidy list: names, one-line descriptions, sources. It reads like research. We wanted to know how much of it holds up, so we checked every name on one of those lists.
We ran this in Hungary, because that is where our studio is and the market we know best. The checks themselves are market-neutral, and the result is worth knowing before you shortlist a provider anywhere, including the UK.
The five names from the 3 September answer, as measured on 5 September and re-checked on 30 September.
What did we ask, and how did we measure it?
AI search tools work in two steps. First they gather results from conventional search engines, then they write an answer from those results. So we measured the two layers separately.
| Step | Date | What we checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 Sep 2026 | “GEO providers in Hungary” (asked in Hungarian): ChatGPT with search, one run |
| 2 | 5 Sep 2026 | each named website: certificate, raw HTML, structured data, robots.txt |
| 3 | 5 Sep 2026 | 8 buyer questions in a plain Google search |
| 4 | 5 Sep 2026 | a manual look at the businesses Google surfaced: website, references, company details |
| 5 | 30 Sep 2026 | a re-check of the websites that weren't working |
The limitation matters: one query, one engine, one run. AI answers vary between runs and between users, so treat this as a signal rather than proof. Proof needs a fixed set of questions repeated every month. We fixed ours on 5 September 2026.
What was behind the five names?
The first name had no working website. ChatGPT described it as a Hungarian service “built specifically for GEO”. The domain had no valid security certificate (the padlock in your browser's address bar), and every URL we tried, from the homepage to the blog, returned the hosting company's generic 404 page. A crawler hits a certificate error here and sees no content at all. We re-checked on 30 September: unchanged.
The fourth and fifth names passed our technical checks. Both sites had structured data in the raw HTML, company details linked to external profiles, citation crawlers allowed in robots.txt, and FAQ markup. One thing we couldn't find in either site's code was web analytics. They may measure on the server side, which isn't visible from outside.
We didn't run the full check on the second and third names. So this article makes no claim about them either way.
In total: one of the five was unreachable, two were in good technical shape, and two we didn't measure. Being first on the list told us nothing about the provider behind it.
Why does ChatGPT's list differ from Google's results?
Because the two measure different things. Google ranks the pages that best match a query. ChatGPT writes an answer from the results it pulls in and from its sources, and names the businesses those sources connect with the topic.
Our numbers showed the gap. On 5 September 2026, a plain Google search for our 8 buyer questions surfaced more than 15 named Hungarian businesses. The two fully checked providers from ChatGPT's answer didn't appear near the top for any of the 8.
The manual review of Google's results was telling too. One named website returned a 404 page, and still did on 30 September. Most of the others were one- or two-person businesses with few references we could verify. That says nothing about their skills. It does show that appearing in a search result or an AI answer isn't the same as being checked.
What should you check before you shortlist a provider?
Three quick checks, none of which need technical knowledge:
1. Does the website work? Open it. If your browser shows a certificate warning or an error page, the list got it wrong. Thirty seconds.
2. Is the content visible without JavaScript? The crawlers behind ChatGPT and Perplexity read raw HTML. We explain how to see what they see, in about two minutes, in this guide.
3. Can they show before-and-after data? Anyone selling visibility should be able to show, on past work, where a client appeared in AI answers before and after. Four questions that make this easy to ask.
Where does Tribloc stand?
We weren't on either list: not among ChatGPT's five names, and not in Google's results for any of the 8 questions. We run the same method on our own site that we'd run for a client, and we publish the results with dates, including the ones that don't flatter us.
Frequently asked questions
Can I trust ChatGPT's recommendation when choosing a GEO provider?
As a starting point, yes. As a decision, no. In our September 2026 measurement, the first of the five providers ChatGPT named had no working website. Nobody audits AI answers, so it's worth checking each name yourself.
Why does ChatGPT show different providers from Google?
Google ranks the pages that best match a query, while ChatGPT writes an answer from the results it pulls in and from its sources. In our measurement, the two fully checked providers from ChatGPT's answer didn't appear near the top of Google for any of our 8 buyer questions.
How can I check a GEO provider's own website?
In three steps: check the site loads with a valid certificate; look at the raw HTML to see whether the text and structured data are there; and ask for before-and-after data from a previous project.
Did you check UK providers?
Not in this study. It covers the Hungarian market in September 2026. The checks are market-neutral, so you can run them on any UK shortlist in a few minutes.
Can this measurement be repeated?
Yes. Anyone can ask the same question and open the same websites. AI answers vary from run to run, which is why we work with a fixed question set and record the date, so later runs can be compared.
If you'd like to see how your own site does on the same technical checks, run the free AI visibility test. No sign-up, and the address you enter isn't stored.
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