An AI assistant states something wrong about your Australian business, and the public record it may be reading

Take the five steps in this order, because only two of them change an answer and the other three are what make those two work. Capture the evidence with a date, find the source the answer leaned on, correct the source rather than arguing with the engine, publish the correct version where a machine can read it, and retake the reading to confirm it moved. Complaining to an assistant is not on the list because it has the least effect per hour spent.

Step one, capture it so it is worth something later

A screenshot alone is nearly useless. Record the exact question asked word for word, the engine and which interface, the date and time, the full answer text, and every source the answer displayed. Then ask the same question twice more and record those too. These are retrieval systems and one answer can be a fluke, so a wrong answer that repeats is the thing worth acting on.

One detail specific to a market question. If you want an Australian reading, put Australia in the question text. The search interfaces in common use accept a country parameter, a language parameter and a location parameter, answer HTTP 200 to all of them, and ignore every one, which is why our own Australian audit writes the market into each prompt rather than setting a field.

Step two, find what the answer was reading

The sources are the lever. In our own Australian audit of 64 blind readings taken on 22 October 2026 across ChatGPT and Gemini, the engines returned 1,010 distinct hosts, 435 of them on Australian domains. Sixty six distinct Australian government hosts appeared 139 times across 25 of the 64 readings, with business.gov.au in 15 readings, accc.gov.au in 13, acma.gov.au in 8, oaic.gov.au in 6, legislation.gov.au in 5 and asic.gov.au in 2. Commercial sources clustered on Australian specialist sites: localdigital.com.au in 9 readings, digitalnomadshq.com.au in 8, 3pdigital.com.au in 7, soupagency.com.au in 7, firstpage.com.au in 7.

So a wrong answer about an Australian business is usually a wrong or outdated page somewhere in that kind of set. A stale directory entry, an old address, a discontinued service still listed, a news piece from three years ago. Find it before doing anything else, because it is the thing that has to change.

Two cautions from our own data. staging.clutch.co appeared in 2 of the 64 readings, which is a directory's staging environment rather than its published site, so a correction request there goes to the operator rather than to the page. And one returned host, ccn.web.tr in 8 readings, is our own data provider's fetch infrastructure rather than a publisher, and is resolved back to the page it serves before anything is counted.

Step three, correct the record at its source

• Your own pages first. If the wrong fact appears anywhere on your site, including an old post or a PDF, fix it there before asking anybody else to change anything.
• Your Business Profile. Address, hours, categories, phone. Widely read and entirely in your control.
• Directories and aggregators. Claim the listing, correct it, record the date. Most have a form and most are slow.
• The public registers. If the error concerns your company details, officeholders or status, the authoritative record is where it has to be fixed, and the engines reached asic.gov.au and business.gov.au in our own readings.

On the registers, one thing worth knowing is what a buyer can see about you. ASIC's own page, read on asic.gov.au on 22 October 2026, says it keeps registers of people and organisations that are disqualified or banned from roles in corporations, financial services or the credit industry and advises that it is a good idea to check people and organisations before you deal with them. It also keeps a separate court enforceable undertakings register and states that people who give one will not always appear on the banned and disqualified registers. If an assistant has conflated your business with somebody on either list, that is the specific error to document precisely.

Step four, publish the correct version so a machine can quote it

A correction nobody can read changes nothing. Publish the right fact on a page you own, in a form a machine can lift: a plain sentence, a date, and the source or method behind it. Across 102 build spec conversations in our earlier work, 102 of 102 asked for a date and a last verified line, 102 of 102 for pricing in the reader's own currency, and 80 of 102 for the sample size behind a figure. A page carrying those is far likelier to be the one an answer leans on next time.

Step five, retake the reading and date it

Same questions, same engines, new date. This is the step that tells you whether any of the previous four worked and it is the step almost nobody takes. Without it you have a correction and a hope. Our page on how to document and report an incorrect AI answer about your business sets out the reporting route in detail for one of the five surfaces.

What the Australian context adds

The government weight in the sources. With 66 distinct government hosts appearing 139 times across 25 readings, an Australian answer is frequently assembled around a regulator or an official page, which cuts both ways. A business whose official record is current and whose own pages visibly match it is a consistent, easily assembled answer. A business whose registry details and website disagree gives an engine two versions to choose between, and you do not get to pick which one it uses.

Questions about wrong AI answers for an Australian business

Can I make an assistant remove something

Reporting routes exist and are worth using for a serious factual error, and they are slower and less certain than fixing the source. Do both and put your effort where the leverage is.

How long does a correction take to show

Weeks for your own pages. A third party directory can take much longer, which is why the retake is scheduled rather than hoped for.

What if the answer is unflattering rather than wrong

That is an editorial job. Publish the better, more specific version of the same fact and let it compete, rather than asking for the unflattering one to be removed.

Should I monitor continuously or check occasionally

Continuously if the answer matters commercially, because the failure mode is not knowing. In our Australian set the engines named a business in 36 of 64 readings and nobody in 28, and both of those states can change without anyone telling you.

What does monitoring cost

Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, read from aiknowsus.com on 22 October 2026, Growth is $199 a month for 100 buyer questions across all five engines and Scale is $399 for 300 questions. Growth is the cheapest plan on that ladder that reads all five. SEO Start at $99 reads zero engines and is not an AI visibility plan.

The record a buyer can check about you, and the two gaps in it

Before worrying about what an assistant invented, know what the public record already says. ASIC keeps registers of people and organisations disqualified or banned from roles in corporations, financial services or the credit industry, and says on its own site, read 22 October 2026, that you can search 6 of them at once and that it is a good idea to check people and organisations before you deal with them. Two gaps in that search are worth knowing precisely, because an error about your business may live in either. ASIC states that people who give a court enforceable undertaking, which it describes as a legal agreement containing one or more commitments accepted to address breaches of the law, will not always appear on the banned and disqualified registers. And it states that people on the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations list will not appear in its search at all. An assistant conflating your business with somebody on either list is making a specific, documentable error. Document it with the question, the engine, the date and the sources, then fix the record and retake the reading. AI Knows Us keeps that question list running across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews and shows which sources each answer leaned on, which is how you find the page carrying the mistake.