The 5-Minute AI Visibility Check Every Middle Tennessee Business Owner Should Do Right Now

By Steve Cory | Cory Media Group | Shelbyville, Tennessee

Put down whatever you're doing for five minutes.

I'm serious. Close the email. Put the phone face down. Tell whoever is standing in your doorway you'll be with them in a moment.

Because what I'm about to walk you through could be the most important five minutes you spend on your business this month.

Most Middle Tennessee business owners have never checked what AI actually says about their business. They've never typed their company name into ChatGPT. They've never asked Perplexity to recommend a business in their category in their city. They've never looked at what Google's AI Overview surfaces when someone searches for what they do in Shelbyville or Murfreesboro or Franklin.

They're running their business blind to the most important shift in local search in twenty years.

This check takes five minutes. It costs nothing. And what you find — or don't find — will tell you more about the health of your digital presence than any analytics dashboard you've ever looked at.

Let's go.

Step 1 — The ChatGPT Test (60 seconds)

Open ChatGPT on your phone or computer. Type this exact query:

"Who is the best [your business category] in [your city] Tennessee?"

Use your actual business category. Your actual city. Hit enter and read what comes back carefully.

Three possible outcomes:

Your business is in the answer. Good. Now read the language ChatGPT used to describe the recommended businesses. What specific services did it mention? What locations? What qualities? That language is your roadmap — it tells you exactly what signals ChatGPT is reading and rewarding in your market.

Your competitor is in the answer and you're not. This is the most common outcome for Middle Tennessee businesses doing this check for the first time. Don't panic. Do pay attention. Read every word of how ChatGPT described your competitor. That description tells you exactly what you need to build.

Nobody local is in the answer. ChatGPT gives a generic response with no specific business recommendations. This means AI doesn't have enough confidence in any local business in your category to make a specific recommendation. That's actually an opportunity — the first business to build the right signals owns the answer.

Write down what you found. We'll come back to it.

Step 2 — The Perplexity Test (60 seconds)

Open Perplexity.ai and run the same query:

"Best [your business category] in [your city] Tennessee"

Perplexity is increasingly important for local business discovery — especially among higher-income, more technically sophisticated consumers. In Williamson County and the growing professional class moving into Rutherford County, Perplexity usage is accelerating fast.

Notice whether your business appears. Notice which sources Perplexity cites — these are the platforms AI is pulling from to assemble its answer. If your business isn't present on those platforms or isn't well-represented there, that's a gap.

Step 3 — The Google AI Overview Test (60 seconds)

Open Google on your phone and search:

"[your business category] in [your city] Tennessee"

Look at the top of the results page. Does an AI Overview box appear — the grey box with an AI-generated summary at the top of the results? If so, read it carefully.

Is your business mentioned? Is your competitor? What language does the AI Overview use to describe the recommended businesses?

Google's AI Overview is now appearing on 68% of local search queries according to Whitespark's 2025 analysis. If you're not in it — you're below the fold before the customer even sees the traditional search results.

Step 4 — The GBP Activity Check (60 seconds)

Go to your Google Business Profile — either through Google Maps or by searching your business name directly.

Ask yourself four questions:

When did you last post? If it's been more than seven days — you're already losing the freshness signal that Google uses to measure business health. If it's been more than thirty days — your impressions have likely dropped dramatically.

When did you last respond to a review? If you have unresponded reviews — especially recent ones — you're missing both the customer service signal and the keyword opportunity that review responses provide.

When did you last upload a photo? Fresh photos signal active business operations to Google's Vision AI. A photo library with nothing newer than six months is a stale signal.

Is every field complete? Services, description, attributes, hours, website link, Q&A. Every incomplete field is a gap in the structured data AI reads to make recommendations.

Step 5 — The Schema Markup Check (60 seconds)

Go to Google and search "Rich Results Test." Click the first result — it's a free Google tool.

Enter your website URL and run the test.

If the results come back empty — you have no schema markup. AI is guessing about your business instead of reading a structured blueprint. This is the most common finding for Middle Tennessee business websites and one of the most impactful things to fix.

If it shows errors — you have schema markup that's broken or incomplete. Broken schema is sometimes worse than no schema because it sends conflicting signals to AI.

If it shows clean structured data types — LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ — you're ahead of most of your competitors in Middle Tennessee. Note which types are present and which are missing.

What Your Results Are Telling You

By now you have five data points about your AI visibility:

What ChatGPT says about your business and your competitors. What Perplexity surfaces when someone searches your category. Whether Google's AI Overview includes you. How active and complete your Google Business Profile is. Whether your website has schema markup.

Most Middle Tennessee business owners doing this check for the first time find the same thing:

They're not in the ChatGPT answer. They're not in the Perplexity answer. They're not in the Google AI Overview. Their GBP hasn't been posted to in months. Their website has no schema markup.

That's not a catastrophe. Every one of those gaps is fixable. And knowing they exist is the first step toward fixing them.

The businesses that are winning in AI search right now didn't start with a perfect digital presence. They started with an honest assessment of where they stood — and then built systematically from there.

That's what this five-minute check gives you. An honest assessment. A starting point. A roadmap.

The One Thing This Check Can't Tell You

Here's the limitation of the five-minute check — and why I want to be honest with you about it.

It tells you what AI says about your business right now. It doesn't tell you why. It doesn't tell you which specific gaps are costing you the most visibility. It doesn't tell you which fixes will produce the biggest improvement in the shortest time. It doesn't give you a prioritized action plan.

For that — you need a proper AI Visibility Audit.

At Cory Media Group we run formal AI Visibility Audits for local businesses across Bedford, Rutherford, and Williamson counties — checking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Apple Intelligence, auditing GBP activity and completeness, analyzing review language, checking schema markup implementation, and delivering a clear prioritized plan for what to fix first.

But the five-minute check is where everyone should start. It takes you from blind to informed in five minutes flat.

And now you're informed.

The Free Next Step

If what you found in this five-minute check concerns you — and for most Middle Tennessee business owners it will — the next step is our free AI Visibility Scorecard at corymediagroup.com/ai-scorecard.

It goes deeper than the five-minute check. It surfaces the specific gaps in your digital presence that are costing you AI recommendations. And it gives you a clear picture of exactly where to start.

No sales pitch. No obligation. Five minutes of your time produced honest information about where you stand. The Scorecard takes that a step further.

Get your free AI Visibility Scorecard at corymediagroup.com/ai-scorecard.

Steve Cory is the founder of Cory Media Group, a digital marketing agency based in Shelbyville, Tennessee, helping local businesses across Middle Tennessee get found, get chosen, and grow in the age of AI search. With 30+ years of entrepreneurial experience — including a bankruptcy and a rebuild — Steve brings credibility that no credential can manufacture.