AI Keeps Sending Customers to Your Old Address
Published
Your website has the right address. Your phone number works. You updated everything when you moved.
Everything you remembered, anyway.
Ask ChatGPT where your business is and how to contact you. Then check what it gives back. If it uses search, open the sources it cites.
The answer might be right. But if it's wrong, fixing your website alone might not fix what your next customer sees.
Your website isn't the only version of your business
In an October discussion on Reddit, one commenter described checking ChatGPT for a dentist client. The cited source was a best-dentists list from 2022. It still carried the old address, even though the practice had moved two years earlier.
Another commenter described a vet clinic with an old phone number in three places the business didn't know about. They reported that ChatGPT kept giving out that number.
Those are individual reports, not a study. I haven't independently checked either business. But they point to a problem you can check for yourself: an old listing can stay online long after you've corrected your own site.
You moved. The internet didn't finish moving with you.
Check the answer a customer would get
Start with the questions a new customer would actually ask:
- Where is [business name] in [town]?
- What's the phone number for [business name]?
- Is [business name] open on Saturday?
- Does [business name] serve [nearby town]?
Try ChatGPT and another service your customers might use, such as Gemini. Note whether web search was used. Save the date, the answer, and any source links.
Treat each answer as a spot check, not a permanent result. Answers can vary by tool, question, location, and whether the tool searches the web. One correct answer doesn't prove every customer gets the same thing.
If an answer gives you the wrong address, open the cited page. If there isn't a citation, search for your business name with the old address or old phone number in quotes. That can help you find stale pages. It doesn't prove those pages caused the AI answer.
Fix the source you can actually find
Make a short list. Page URL. Wrong detail. Correct detail. Who can change it.
Start with your own website and the business profiles you control. Check the contact page, footer, hours, and service-area copy. If your site includes structured business data, check that too. A visible phone number and a hidden old number shouldn't disagree.
Then work through the outside pages you've found:
- Business and map listings you can claim or edit.
- Chamber and trade-association directories.
- Old local articles and best-of lists.
- Social profiles and booking pages.
Request corrections from the publishers you can't edit yourself. Keep the request and the URL so you can follow up.
Don't mark it fixed just because you sent an email. Open the page again and check the actual address or number.
Keep a small correction log
A spreadsheet is enough:
- Page: the exact URL with the mistake.
- Problem: old address, dead number, wrong hours, or wrong service area.
- Action: changed it yourself or contacted the publisher.
- Verified: the date you opened the page and saw the correction.
- Retest: the AI question and answer after the source changed.
Correcting a page doesn't guarantee an immediate change in an AI answer. A tool may still surface another source or older information. Retest, check the citations again, and keep the unresolved items on your list.
No honest cleanup offer should promise a certain ChatGPT answer by Friday.
Check this before buying another visibility tool
You don't need a paid dashboard to find out whether an AI tool gives out your old phone number. Ask it. Check the answer. Follow the sources.
A tracking tool may help if you've got multiple locations or need repeated checks. But start with the basic question: can a customer reach the business using the details they're given?
For a shop in Elmira, Corning, or Northern Pennsylvania, the next useful step may be one correction request, not another software subscription.
Check what AI says about your business. Then check where it got the information.
Want help figuring out which AI problems are worth your time? Fuzzy Solutions' AI Assessment is a place to start. We look at your business and recommend practical automation work. No promise to control what ChatGPT says about you.
Source: October 13 discussion on r/Vendasta. The examples above are commenter reports, not independently verified client results.
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