What if AI gives customers your old opening hours?

Being named is little help if the answer sends someone to a closed door. Trace the wrong detail, correct the places that publish it and keep the website update separate from the next AI answer.

A customer asks an AI assistant for a repair business that opens on Saturday. It names your firm and says you are open until lunchtime. You stopped opening on Saturdays months ago.

In this hypothetical example, the business gets the mention. The customer gets the wrong visiting hours. A visibility score alone cannot tell those outcomes apart.

An old address, discontinued service or expired price deserves the same attention. Find the disputed detail, check the sources and correct what customers can read.

Find the claim behind the answer

Save the question, answer, date, system and source links. Include the country, language and whether it was a fresh conversation or a follow-up, so a later check has the same starting point.

Open the linked pages. Does the old schedule appear there? Is it the right branch? Does a date limit the statement? A nearby citation is a lead to investigate, not proof of where every sentence came from.

OpenAI's guidance for ChatGPT search warns that results and citations can be outdated or incorrect and recommends checking the source. OpenAI: Searching the web with ChatGPT

Correct the public information

Start with the pages you control. Check contact details, location pages and any service page that gives visiting instructions. Replace vague notices such as “our hours have changed” with the actual schedule. Name the branch if hours differ by location.

Then check the profiles and directories identified in the answer. Google Business Profile has separate settings for regular hours, special hours and services with different hours. A holiday closure belongs in a different setting from a permanent weekly change. Google: Edit your business hours

For a third-party directory, give its owner the exact URL, the incorrect text and a link to your current information. Keep the correction pending until the public page changes.

A useful record can be brief: what was wrong, who can change it, when the request was made and what is now visible. If the linked pages are already correct, retain the answer and use the system's feedback route where available.

Allow for the search update

For a page you manage, Google's URL Inspection tool can request a recrawl. Google says crawling may take days or weeks; requesting it does not guarantee immediate inclusion in search results. Repeated requests for the same URL do not speed it up. This concerns Google Search, not an update deadline for every AI assistant. Google Search Central: Ask Google to recrawl your URLs

Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool addresses eligible search results after a page disappears or changes significantly. It cannot correct an old schedule that a directory still publishes on its live page. That correction needs to happen at the directory. Google: Refresh Outdated Content tool

Keep “website corrected”, “profile corrected” and “answer checked again” as separate states. They describe different pieces of evidence.

Check the detail again

Repeat the saved customer question under the recorded conditions. Note whether the business is named, what hours the answer gives and which links appear. Keep the earlier answer alongside it.

A correct answer is a dated observation for that check. It does not establish that your edit caused the change or that every customer will now receive it.

Cited is not the same as named explains the distinction between the source link and the business name. This adds another check: whether the information about that business is right. It is a different objective from the citation question in Does updating old content get you cited by AI?.

For the repair firm, the useful result is an answer that gives the correct visiting hours, backed by current public information.

Check what AI says about your business

A TheCited audit reviews recorded answers to selected customer questions, their available sources and the businesses named. See what the audit includes. It provides evidence and recommendations; changes to your website or profiles remain separate actions.