Why Does ChatGPT Merge Our Restaurant With Another Business Using the Same Name in a Different City?
ChatGPT merges your restaurant with a same-named business in another city because the name is the strongest clue it has, and many sources mention a restaurant by name alone. Reviews, food articles, social posts and menus often never say which city they are about. When the other business is better known, with more reviews, more coverage and an older website, its menu, opening hours, ratings or even its closure can be attached to you. The fix is to make the two easy to tell apart. Pair your name with your city everywhere. Keep your address, phone, website and social handles consistent and distinct, and publish your menu in text with your location on the page. Then fix the listings and pages that blur the two, starting with those ChatGPT cites.
What gets mixed up?
| What is merged | Example | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Menu and prices | The other restaurant's dishes described as yours | Customers arrive expecting food you do not serve |
| Opening hours | Their hours shown for you | Customers turn up when you are closed, or stay away when you are open |
| Reviews and ratings | Their complaints or praise attributed to you | Your reputation reflects someone else's service |
| Status | "Permanently closed" because the other one closed | You lose customers who think you have gone |
| Dietary and allergen information | Their allergen notes applied to your dishes | A safety risk for customers with allergies |
| Website and phone | Their site or number given for you | Bookings and calls go elsewhere |
Allergen errors deserve priority. How food businesses should handle false allergen claims is covered in what food businesses should do when AI makes false allergen or gluten-free claims.
Why is the other business winning?
- More evidence. More reviews, more articles and a longer web history make it the default meaning of the name.
- Name-only mentions. "Best pizza at [name]" says nothing about which [name].
- Similar web identity. Similar domains, social handles or logos make sources hard to separate.
- Missing location in your own materials. If your website title is just the name, you are contributing to the ambiguity.
- Question wording. "[Name] menu" or "Is [name] open?" does not include a city, so the assistant has to guess which business is meant and may pick the most prominent match. Questions like "[name] in [city]" usually go better.
How do you test for merging?
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, several times each:
- "[Name] menu" and "[Name] [city] menu"
- "Is [name] open today?" and "Is [name] in [city] still open?"
- "[Name] reviews"
- "Does [name] have vegan or gluten-free options?"
- "[Name] phone number" and "[Name] website"
Compare questions with and without the city. If answers without the city describe the other restaurant, that is expected ambiguity. If answers with the city still mix the two, you have a merging problem to fix. Open the cited sources to see which pages carry mixed information.
How do you separate the two restaurants?
On your own site:
- Put the city in the site title, homepage heading and first sentence: "[Name] is a Sichuan restaurant in [neighbourhood], [city]."
- Publish the menu as a text page with your address on it, not only as a PDF or image.
- Add a short note if confusion is common: "We are [name] in [city]. We are not connected to [name] in [other city]."
- Use LocalBusiness markup with your full address, phone, coordinates and sameAs links to your own profiles.
On profiles and listings:
- Keep your Business Profile, Apple Business, Bing Places and delivery platform listings identical to your site in name, address, phone and website.
- Check review sites and directories for merged or cross-linked listings, and ask them to correct wrong phone numbers, websites or photos.
- Make your social handles and bios distinctive, with your city in the bio.
In coverage:
- Ask journalists, bloggers and partners to include your city when they write about you.
- Ask every guest for an honest review in their own words, and do not suggest what to write.
How assistants mix up businesses at one address is a related problem, covered in why ChatGPT recommends the wrong business when several share one address.
Should you consider a name change or legal action?
Usually not as a first step. Most merging can be reduced with location signals and clean listings. If the other business is using a name you have rights to, or customers are regularly misled, take legal advice about trademark options. If you are opening a new restaurant, check how assistants answer questions about your intended name before you commit.
What might an illustrative case look like?
Consider an illustrative ramen restaurant in Leeds sharing its name with a better-known ramen bar in Manchester that had closed. ChatGPT told customers the Leeds restaurant was "permanently closed" and described the Manchester menu. The Leeds restaurant's website title was just its name, its menu was a PDF, and a food blog had linked to the Manchester site in a review of the Leeds branch. The owners added "Leeds" to the site title and heading, published the menu as text with the address, and added a one-line note about the Manchester bar. They also asked the blogger to fix the link. Within a few weeks, questions naming Leeds returned the right status and menu, and "closed" answers faded.
What do people ask about restaurants with shared names?
Will ChatGPT ever get name-only questions right?
Sometimes, but name-only questions are ambiguous by nature. Focus on making answers correct when the city or neighbourhood is included.
Does a unique domain help?
Yes. A domain that includes your city or a distinctive word makes your site harder to confuse with the other business.
Should we contact the other restaurant?
It can help if both of you suffer from the mix-up. Agreeing to add "not connected to" notes on both sites benefits both.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources