Answer engine optimization · Case study
We ran a real Miami med spa through ChatGPT 46 times. Named 13 times, cited once.
We took an actual Miami med spa and ran it through ChatGPT 46 times. It got mentioned by name 13 times, and its own website was cited just once.
We didn't use a made-up example. LUX MedSpa Brickell is a real place in downtown Miami with a live website and plenty of Google reviews. We asked ChatGPT 46 questions, the kind a real customer in that city would actually type. Some were broad, like "best med spa in Miami." Some were specific, like questions about lymphatic drainage or Dysport. A few even matched search terms we know bring traffic to the business's own site. Then we went line by line through every single answer to see what ChatGPT actually did with the business.
Thirteen mentions looks like a win
At first glance, it looks like a success. LUX MedSpa Brickell was named in 13 of the 46 questions. In 11 of those 13, it was listed first, ahead of every other competitor mentioned. The remaining two mentions were weaker: one ranked it fourth in a shortlist, one buried it seventh in a passing reference. Most local businesses we test get named zero times. Thirteen out of 46, usually in the top spot, sounds like a business that's already cracked AI visibility.
Then we checked something most people miss: whether ChatGPT actually cited the business's own website as a source, or just dropped the name. Out of all 46 questions, the business's own domain showed up as a cited source exactly once. That was for a specific treatment, Ultraformer MPT, where its treatment page was listed alongside a TripAdvisor review. Every other time the business was named, whether in first place or not, the source behind that sentence pointed somewhere else.
Named because of someone else's page
Take the question "best day spa in Miami." LUX is named first. But the sources ChatGPT pulled from are a luxury travel site, the official Miami tourism guide, a TripAdvisor page, and a city magazine. Not one is the business's own site. The TripAdvisor page is a review listing for LUX MedSpa Brickell specifically, which is probably how the name got into the answer. The business earned the mention, but a third-party page did the work of getting it there. The same pattern repeats for "spa services," "botox," "microneedling," "hydrafacial," and "massages in Miami": named, often first, with every source being a directory, a city guide, or a review site instead of the business's own domain.
Where the other 33 questions go instead
Then there are the 33 questions, roughly seven out of ten, where LUX MedSpa Brickell doesn't appear at all. It isn't first, isn't buried in a list, isn't mentioned in any way. So where does ChatGPT send people instead? The single most-cited source across all 46 answers is miamiandbeaches.com, the official Miami tourism site. It shows up as a source in 8 of the 46 questions. That's more than any actual med spa in the city, including LUX. Two other sites, medaestheticsmiami.com and timeout.com, each show up in 7 of the 46 questions. One is a real competing med spa. The other is a city magazine, the same kind of general-interest guide sitting at the top of the list.
Named and cited are two different jobs
This pattern shows that "getting named" and "getting cited" are two different results, and only one puts a link to your own site in front of the customer. When ChatGPT names a business without citing its site, it's usually repeating a fact it picked up from somebody else's page: a directory listing, a review, a "best of" roundup that happens to include the business's name. The person reading that answer sees a link to miamiandbeaches.com or a TripAdvisor page rather than to the business's homepage. If they click, that's where they land, and the business is just one option among many on somebody else's site.
This is one business, one city, one day of testing, so we're not calling it a universal law. But the shape of it, name recognition riding on someone else's page while the business's own domain sits uncited, is the pattern we see every time we run this test on a business that already has some reputation. A strong local reputation gets you named. It does not automatically get your own website cited, and those are separate problems that need separate fixes.
What this means if it's your business
If this were your business, the number to watch isn't whether ChatGPT knows your name. It's whether ChatGPT is willing to send someone to your own website instead of to the page that's currently carrying your name for you. Here, that would mean going after the two or three sites ChatGPT already trusts for this category, making sure the listing on each one is accurate and complete, and then working on getting the business's own domain into that same source pool directly. You can't assume a strong reputation and 11 first-place mentions means the visibility problem is solved. That reputation hasn't solved it. It means the business is well known to a system that still isn't linking to it, and a good name inside somebody else's answer doesn't put a single visitor on the business's own site.
Sources: live ChatGPT interface results for 46 questions targeting "med spa" and related treatment terms in Miami, run against luxmedspabrickell.com, September 2026. Mention, citation, and prominence counts pulled directly from the audit log for each question.