58% of Swiss SMEs have never checked what AI says about them

What happened

On 24 September 2026 the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) published the “KMU Digital Pulse 2026”, a survey of 504 marketing decision-makers in Swiss SMEs, run with the directory company localsearch (HSLU IKM blog). Its headline: 58% of SMEs have never checked how they appear when someone asks an AI tool about them. Only 8% check systematically, and 2% take targeted steps to improve how they show up.

Why it matters for your business

More customers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI answers “Who’s a good electrician in Winterthur?” instead of scrolling a list of links. If the AI gets your opening hours wrong, or names a competitor instead, you lose the job without knowing it.

The survey shows owners know this matters. 76% say it is important that AI gives correct information about their company, and 66% that it presents them positively (HSLU IKM blog). Yet most have never looked. The gap is widest in micro-firms with 1 to 9 staff: 60% have never checked, against 36% of medium-sized firms.

The same study found that only 21% of Swiss SMEs use AI tools in their own marketing. Among those that do, 92% use it to produce text (localsearch; Zenodo study record).

The Swiss angle

This is Swiss data. The fieldwork ran from 13 to 21 May 2026, carried out by intervista, and results are weighted by language region and company size (Zenodo). Note that localsearch, the study partner, sells online visibility services to SMEs.

HSLU’s Thomas Wozniak sums it up: “Wer nicht nachschaut, was eine KI über das eigene Unternehmen ausgibt, weiss nicht, ob und wie es dort von der Kundschaft wahrgenommen wird” (localsearch). Roughly: if you never check what AI says about your company, you don’t know how customers see you there.

What to do

Take ten minutes today. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google the question a new customer would ask, with your town in it. Note what’s wrong. Our guide this week shows how to fix it.

Sources

HSLU Institute of Communication and Marketing, “KI-Sichtbarkeit: 58 % der KMU haben nie nachgeschaut”, 24 September 2026: https://hub.hslu.ch/ikm/2026/09/24/ki-sichtbarkeit-58-der-kmu-haben-nie-nachgeschaut/
localsearch, KMU Digital Pulse 2026: https://www.localsearch.ch/de/kmu-digital-pulse-2026/
Wozniak, Boenigk, Niederberger, Stutz, KMU Digital Pulse 2026 (Zenodo record): https://zenodo.org/records/22098334