We asked ChatGPT about 30 Nordic stores. Half of them never came up.
We asked ChatGPT the questions real buyers ask, in Swedish and Norwegian, twice each. 15 of 30 established stores weren't mentioned once. What we found and how to check yours.
Quick answer: we asked ChatGPT (with web search) the question a real buyer would ask for each of 30 established Swedish and Norwegian businesses, twice. 15 weren't mentioned in either answer, 5 showed up once out of two identical questions, and 10 showed up both times. Being a good, profitable business didn't decide it.
How we tested
- 30 businesses in Sweden and Norway, online shops and B2B suppliers, with register-checked turnover of roughly €0.3M to €8M. Not hobby shops.
- One real buyer question each, in Swedish or Norwegian, the way a customer would type it. For example: "Where can I buy tiles cheaply online in Sweden?" or "Which Norwegian suppliers sell drilling equipment to contractors?"
- ChatGPT's model with web search on (gpt-4.1 through OpenAI's API, location set to Sweden or Norway).
- Two runs per question, because AI answers change from one ask to the next.
What came back
| Result | Businesses |
|---|---|
| Not mentioned in either run | 15 |
| Mentioned once out of two identical questions | 5 |
| Mentioned both times | 10 |
Three things stood out:
1. The answer goes to someone. In every case where a business wasn't mentioned, ChatGPT still named 3 to 5 others. For the consumer questions, that was mostly large marketplaces and DIY chains. For the B2B questions it was other specialist suppliers. The buyer still got an answer. It just wasn't them.
2. Showing up once isn't safe. Five businesses appeared in one answer and vanished from the next, for the exact same question. If a customer asks once, it's a coin toss.
3. Size didn't predict it. Some of the invisible businesses had higher turnover than ones that appeared both times. One industrial supplier we tested also took 28 seconds to show its main content on mobile, so the problems tend to come in pairs.
What we didn't test
We didn't prove why each business was left out. That would need a per-site review. What we can say is that the usual suspects are cheap to check:
- AI crawlers blocked. robots.txt or a CDN setting that stops GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot from reading the site.
- Category pages that don't say what you sell in plain words. If the page title says "Collection" instead of "Oak flooring", a model has less to match.
- No llms.txt. A short file that tells AI tools what the business is and where the key pages are. Shopify stores can serve one from a theme template.
- Few mentions elsewhere. Comparison pages, directories and reviews that name you.
Our post Rank on Google, invisible to ChatGPT walks through a 10-minute version of that check.
Try it on your own store
Ask ChatGPT, with search on, the question your best customer would ask, in their language. Ask twice. Write down who it names.
If it isn't you, our €150 Store Performance Audit includes AI search visibility, alongside speed, conversion, SEO and app costs. It has to find at least 5 fixes worth more than the fee, or you get your money back. Book the audit
Author: Kalvis Ceizins, Focused Developer.