Is AI bringing you customers?

By Victoria Barton · Updated 11 November 2026

Seeing your business in an AI answer feels good. But has anyone contacted you because of it? That’s the next thing to find out.

Someone may read an AI answer, select a link to your website, then contact you. They may also leave without booking. You need to check what happens after the recommendation before calling it a business result.

1. Separate these 3 results

• Your business is named or recommended in an AI answer. This tells you what appeared in that particular check.

• Someone visits your website using a link in an AI answer. A website visitor report may record where that visit came from.

• Someone contacts you, books or pays. Check your enquiry messages and booking records to count these separately.

A mention is not a website visit, and an enquiry is not a paid booking. Keeping the numbers separate helps you see where people stop. You can begin with customer answers and booking records even if you have no website visitor report.

2. Ask new customers how they found you

Add “How did you hear about me?” to your enquiry form, or ask it when someone first contacts you. Let them answer in their own words. If they only say “online”, you can ask “Do you remember which website or app?” Avoid suggesting ChatGPT first, because that could influence their answer.

Keep “I found you through ChatGPT” separate from “I found you online”. If someone does not remember, record “unknown”. They may have read an answer on one day and contacted you later, so website reports will not explain every enquiry.

3. Check the route to booking

Open your website on your phone as a customer would. Find the service you want to test, read the price and what is included, then tap the booking or contact button. Check that it opens the right page. Stop before paying or sending a real enquiry.

If you cannot find the next step, tell your website manager exactly where you got stuck. For example: “The Book button on the massage page opens the wrong form.” A clear report is easier to fix than “the website does not work”.

4. Ask AI to organise the results

Once a week, gather the dates of enquiries, what each customer said about finding you, and whether each enquiry became a paid booking. Before putting anything into AI, remove names, email addresses, phone numbers, messages about personal matters and any other identifying details.

Paste the cleaned records into a regular AI chat and ask: “Group these records by week. Count enquiries and paid bookings separately. Keep ‘customer said ChatGPT’, ‘website report says ChatGPT’ and ‘unknown’ separate. Do not guess missing sources or count the same enquiry twice. Show any records you cannot confidently match.”

Check the totals against your records before using them. If you only have a few enquiries, keep collecting information before deciding there is a pattern. You do not need to build a spreadsheet by hand to start.

How to check whether ChatGPT recommends you

An earlier version of this article suggested visitors from AI were more likely to buy by a fixed amount. That claim has been removed. Your own customers and bookings are what matter.

How will I know whether an AI recommendation brings me an enquiry?

If you already use a website visitor report, ask the person who manages it to show visits whose recorded source is an AI service, such as chatgpt.com. “Source” means where the report says a visit came from. Ask which visits it cannot identify. If no report is installed, it cannot recreate past visits.

Compare that report with your saved AI answers and the customer records you prepared above. Keep “customer said ChatGPT”, “visit recorded from ChatGPT” and “unknown” separate. Do not add visits and enquiries together as if they were different people. More mentions do not prove more sales.

Want me to check your business?

My £67 AI visibility audit checks your website and whether AI recommends you. You get a personal video showing what I found and what to fix next, in plain English.

Book your £67 AI visibility audit