Check our claims
Four questions to ask anyone selling AI visibility. Here are our answers.
In October, Func. digital published four questions to put to any AI visibility claim (opens in a new tab), starting with ours. They are the right questions. This page answers each one plainly.
Who is making the claim, and what do they sell?
We are. Starworks is a Melbourne company that owns and runs a network of specialist Australian business directories, founded by Ben Adler. We sell a place in that network: a verified profile of your business, published across the directories it qualifies for, and a labelled Featured place, month to month.
Because we sell it, we do not ask you to rely on our own testing. Every independent figure on this site links to the firm that measured it. The ones we measured ourselves, like our request log, are labelled as ours.
What was actually measured?
Four different things, and we keep them apart:
- Read. Our edge log has recorded 1,502,750 requests from named AI crawlers between 12 August 2026 and 21 September 2026, 9,212 of them while someone was asking. A request is not a recommendation.
- Cited. 7 independent studies and 3 published tests found Starworks among the sources in their answers. They counted appearances, not customers.
- Named. This is what our guarantee measures: whether ChatGPT names your business first for the question we agree with you.
- Hired. Only you can count customers. Our monthly report shows what we can see: what we published, which AI crawlers read it, and where you appeared in our sampled answers.
Who measured it, and could anyone check?
The citation figures come from firms that do not work for us, among them Search Scope, Dossis Digital, Tyso, AIGROW.GG, Named First and Top of Prompt, each linked on the evidence page with its place, engines and limits. Our own crawl figures are published day by day on the record.
Nothing on this site rests on a study you cannot open. If a firm measured it, the figure links to that firm’s own page.
Your guarantee is checked in the open. On day 60 we ask the agreed question in five new, signed-out ChatGPT chats from your city and send you a dated screenshot of all five answers the same day. You can watch it live, or run it yourself the same day; if your result differs, we run it again together and that one counts.
Was it measured in your category?
Maybe not, and that matters. The studies cover trades, home services, accountants, healthcare software and more, in Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Canberra, Sydney and beyond, but a result for electricians in Perth says little about a dentist in Hobart.
So before you pay anything, we check your business, your category and your location, and tell you within two working days whether you are a fit. If your category is not one we publish, or the first place for it is already taken, we say so.
Or test it yourself. It takes ten minutes.
The most useful thing in Func.’s article is its last piece of advice: run the test. We agree. Here is how.
Open ChatGPT signed out.
A fresh chat, not your account, so nothing you have asked before shapes the answer.
Ask what your customers ask.
“Best plumber in Geelong”, “emergency electrician near Ringwood”, “who should do my tax in Ballarat”. Use your trade and your suburb.
Open the sources.
Under the answer are the pages it read. Note which sites appear, and how often across a few asks.
Ask again tomorrow.
Answers move from one ask to the next. A pattern across several asks tells you more than any single answer.
What we will never claim
Four promises other people make about AI visibility. We don’t.
- That you will be first in every answer, every time, for anything anyone asks.
- That a crawler visit, a citation or a mention is the same as a customer.
- That a study in one city or trade proves a result in yours.
- That organic rankings on our directories are for sale. Featured places are labelled.
The guarantee, in full Read Func.’s article (opens in a new tab)
Ask us anything else.
Twenty minutes with Ben, about your business, your area and the numbers.