Evening, Tampa Pasta House. Curtis, our AI, is the voice that answers a guest who asks "how much, and when?" For six parts we asked assistants his guests' questions. Here is the summary, and a checklist for your own business.
Tampa Pasta House is our sample business. Its page, its catalog and its Telegram channel are ours, and it has no street address. That makes it a clean test of what an assistant does with very little to read.
ChatGPT, the Gemini app, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude and Perplexity are named here only to identify what we checked. SmashOne is not affiliated with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic or Perplexity.
📬 Part 1: the name
What we asked: three questions in a fresh chat. Today's hours, the price of the lasagna, and whether the restaurant was open right now. Two assistants answered, ChatGPT and the Gemini app. Claude asked us to sign in, and Perplexity stopped us at a security check.
What came back: hours, 0 of 2 matched. Price, 0 of 2. Open right now, 2 of 2, because at 5 a.m. almost every restaurant is closed. Both prices came from a different restaurant with a similar name.
Where it came from: 3 of 6 answers named a source, and all three pointed to a delivery app. Our demo page was named in 0 of 6. Later that morning, a second, paid account with web search found our page and read the hours and the price correctly.
"When it couldn't find our restaurant, it found one with a similar name."
Read part 1 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-1/
🕔 Part 2: the hours
What we asked: the hours, the address, open right now or not, and the source.
What came back: 0 full matches out of 2. ChatGPT answered about a pizza place with a similar name: its street address and its hours from a delivery app. Gemini 3.8 Flash found our page and said honestly, "Address: None." It got the evening hours, 5–10, right. Then it added "Lunch Service: Thursday – Saturday," "Mondays: Closed," and "a 14-table trattoria in the Seminole Heights neighborhood."
Where it came from: our page said "Tampa, FL" and one line, "Open for dinner tonight, 5–10." No weekly schedule, no street, no phone number.
"An empty line on your listing doesn't stay empty."
Read part 2 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-2/
🍝 Part 3: the special
What we asked: "Does Tampa Pasta House have any specials this week?" in English, then in Spanish.
What came back: 4 answers out of 4 named a special. None of them named ours. ChatGPT listed two-for-one deals from a delivery app that belong to a different restaurant with a similar name. The Gemini app described a trattoria that "rotates" its dishes, which was our own post from September 11.
Where it came from: our real special was a single "Tonight only" line on one page. Old posts outlast it.
Read part 3 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-3/
🧾 Part 4: the word next to the price
What we asked: nothing. We checked ourselves: our page, the hundred items in our catalog, our channel.
What came back: the prices matched everywhere. One word didn't. On October 16 at 11 a.m., our channel said "lunch Thursday through Saturday." At 9:01 p.m. that day, a post about the lunch lasagna said "available on weekdays until the tray runs out." We wrote "weekdays" ourselves, in the dish description in our catalog.
Where it came from: us. We corrected the catalog on October 21; the October 16 post is still up.
"The price was right. The word next to it was wrong."
Read part 4 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-4/
🔢 Part 5: where the number comes from
What we asked: eight customer questions to Gemini 3.8 Flash, twice. First with nothing to read. Then with three "search results" we handed it ourselves, a stand-in for search, not a real one.
What came back: with nothing to read, 4 of 8 answers had a number, and all 4 numbers were made up. With our pages, 8 of 8 had a number, every one of them ours, 0 made up. And in 4 of 8 answers, right next to the correct lunch price, sat our own "weekdays."
Where it came from: the source was named in 8 of 8, and it was us, mistake included.
"An assistant repeats the number you wrote. And the word you wrote next to it."
Read part 5 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-5/
🌾 Part 6: the "yes"
What we asked: six guest questions to Gemini 3.8 Flash about gluten-free pasta, in three rounds.
What came back: the question alone, "yes" in 0 of 6. With our page as it reads now, "yes" in 0 of 6, and an honest "does not explicitly confirm." With one old line swapped back in, "yes" in 6 of 6: "Yes, Tampa Pasta House does offer gluten-free pasta."
Where it came from: our own page, named as the source every time. The old line was a sample Messenger reply we wrote ourselves. Our catalog has 100 menu items, and the word "gluten" isn't in any of them. We replaced the line on October 21. This isn't medical advice: ask the restaurant itself before you order.
Read part 6 → https://smashone.us/blog/what-ai-says-about-your-business-part-6/
🗓 What we actually tested
Part 1: Oct 15, 5:01 to 5:08 a.m. ET, plus a second check 9:30 to 9:36 a.m. from a paid account. Part 2: Oct 16, 7:59 to 8:02 a.m. ET. Part 3: Oct 15, 12:50 to 12:59 p.m. ET. Part 4: no assistant asked; we reread our own pages on Oct 20. Part 5: Oct 23. Part 6: Oct 25, 10:48 to 10:52 a.m. Tampa time.
One restaurant, our sample. Small samples: one or two assistants, a handful of questions each time. Answers change by model, question, place and time. Part 1's three questions took us about ten minutes.
✅ Six questions to ask about your own business
- ☐ Part 1: Ask "What are the opening hours of <your business> in <your city> today?" Check that the answer is about your business, not a place with a similar name.
- ☐ Part 2: Ask for your hours and street address, then "Where did you get this information from?" Check every line against your website and your Google Business Profile.
- ☐ Part 3: Ask "Does <your business> have any specials this week?" Check it against the special you actually wrote today, not one from an old post.
- ☐ Part 4: Ask "Can I get <item> on a Tuesday?" Check the word next to your price, like "weekdays" or "today only," against your real hours.
- ☐ Part 5: Ask "How much is <item> at <your business>?" then "Where did you get that price?" Check the number and the source against your own catalog.
- ☐ Part 6: Ask "Does <your business> have <gluten-free pasta>?" then "Where did you read that? Give me the link." Check that your menu actually says it.
Which of these six have you asked about your own business?
