How to check whether ChatGPT recommends your golf course

The short answer: write down 10 to 15 questions your golfers actually ask, put each one to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode in a fresh chat once a month, and record three things: whether your course was named, whether your own website was linked as a source, and who was cited instead. That takes about half an hour, and after two or three months it shows you clearly where you stand.

It's worth doing because more golfers now ask an AI tool where to play, or what to know before a round, instead of scrolling through search results. The answer they get usually draws on just a handful of sources. If your website isn't one of them, a directory, a tee-time marketplace, or an old review is describing your course for you.

Step 1: Write the questions golfers ask

Use golfers' own words, not your marketing copy. Mix three kinds:

Area questions, where you're competing with nearby courses: “best public golf courses near [your town]”, “golf courses near [the hotel or attraction your visitors stay at]”, “cheap golf in [county]”.
Questions about your course, where you should be the best source: “what's the dress code at [course]”, “what should I know before playing [course]”, “[course] scorecard”, “can you walk [course]”, “does [course] have a driving range”.
Comparisons: “[course] or [the course down the road]?”, “which is harder, [course] or [rival]?”

Ask your pro shop staff what golfers ask on the phone. Those questions are the ones people now type into an AI tool.

Step 2: Run them the same way every time

AI answers vary, so a fair test controls what it can:

Start a fresh chat for every question, signed out or with memory and personalization turned off. Otherwise the tool may tailor its answer to you, and you're the person most likely to have asked about your own course before.
Use the exact same wording every month. Small wording changes can produce different answers, which hides the trend you're trying to see.
Note where you are. Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews take your location into account for local questions, so testing “golf near me” from your office isn't what a visitor sees from their hotel. Name the town in the question instead.
Run borderline results twice. If you're mentioned in one run and not the next, record that. It means you're close.

Step 3: Record three things

Cited: your own website appears as a linked source. Perplexity always lists its sources; ChatGPT and AI Mode show them when they searched the web for the answer.
Named: your course is mentioned, but the link goes somewhere else, or there's no link at all.
Who was cited instead. This is the most useful column. It tells you exactly which pages you're competing with, and often reveals that the tool is describing your course from a third-party listing.

A simple spreadsheet works: one row per question, one column per tool, a notes column, and a new tab each month.

Step 4: Read the results

The patterns usually point to a specific fix:

You're named, but another site is cited for questions about your own course. Your website probably doesn't answer that question in plain text, or the answer is in a PDF, an image, or a booking widget the tool can't read. See how golfers find courses in AI search, and how to show up.
The answer has facts that are wrong. Find the source it's repeating and fix it there. See what to do when AI gets your golf course wrong.
You're missing from area questions entirely. This is usually about your listings and how often your course is mentioned elsewhere: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, local tourism sites, golf directories, and reviews. That takes longer to move than fixing your own site, so start with the questions about your course.

Keep it boring and consistent

Check once a month, not every day. Answers shift from day to day, and the signal you want is the trend over months. Keep the question list fixed. If you want to test new questions, add them alongside the old ones rather than replacing them, so your history stays comparable.

We run the same test for maps.golf every month, using a fixed list of golfer and course-operator questions across all three tools. It's the quickest way we've found to see whether a change to a page actually reached the answers golfers get.