Is ChatGPT sending you customers? How to find out
More people ask an AI assistant who to call before they search Google. Here is how AI search sends people to your business, what you can and cannot track, and what the numbers looked like for one firm.
Ask a business owner whether ChatGPT is sending them work and you will usually get a shrug. They have heard that people use AI to find tradespeople, solicitors and dentists, but they have no way of knowing if it is happening to them. Here is how to find out.
How AI assistants send people your way
When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude something like "who is a good emergency plumber in Leeds?", the answer often names a few local firms and links to their websites. Some people click the link, read your site and then ring. Others copy the number straight from the answer.
Those two groups behave very differently, and only one of them can be tracked honestly.
What we can track
When someone clicks through from an AI assistant to your website, their browser tells your site where they came from, the same way it does for Google or Facebook. Call Tracked recognises the main AI assistants and treats them as their own channel, called AI search. Those visitors see their own tracking number, so when they ring, the call is counted as AI search.
You see AI search calls in your reports next to Google Ads, organic search and your Google Business Profile, with recordings, summaries and lead scores like any other call.
What we cannot track
If an AI answer shows your phone number and someone rings it without visiting your website, there is no visit to match. Nobody can tell that call came from AI. It shows up under whichever number they rang, usually your Google Business Profile or main number.
Be wary of anyone who claims to track those calls. The honest answer is that you can see the people who click through, and that is usually enough to tell whether AI search is worth paying attention to.
A worked example
Take a heating firm in Leeds, with made-up but realistic figures. In one month they get 412 tracked calls:
| Channel | Calls | Real leads |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 128 | 74 |
| Google Business Profile | 96 | 61 |
| Organic search | 72 | 40 |
| AI search | 12 | 9 |
| Other channels | 104 | 52 |
Twelve calls sounds small next to Google Ads. But nine of the twelve were real leads, a higher share than any other channel, and the AI summaries show most of them asked for a quote straight away. People who arrive from an AI recommendation have often already decided.
That is worth knowing. It suggests the firm should keep its website clear about prices, areas covered and reviews, because that is what AI assistants read when they decide who to recommend.
How to see this for your own business
AI search tracking is included on every Call Tracked plan, from Starter at £49 a month. Add the script to your website and AI search gets its own number straight away. The AI call intelligence page explains more, and you can try it free for 14 days.