AI Cites Us a Lot. It Sent Us 0 Leads. Here’s Why.

Short answer: AI search mentions us a lot, but almost never when a contractor is shopping for an agency. Over the last 60 days, when ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI were asked “who’s the best agency for restoration or roofing companies,” they named PushLeads 0 times in 74 answers. About 100 visitors came to our site from AI tools in that same window. None of them became a lead.

A few weeks ago we published Is AI Already Citing Your Videos, and Is It Sending You Customers? This is the honest follow-up, using our own numbers.

TL;DR

• When people ask AI about the topics we publish on, it names us about half the time (110 of 219 questions).
• When people ask for the best SEO agency in Asheville, every engine names us (12 of 12 questions).
• When a restoration or roofing owner anywhere asks AI which agency to hire, we’re not in the answer (0 of 9 questions, 0 of 74 answers).
• About 100 visits came from AI tools in 60 days, mostly to blog posts. 0 leads.
• Getting cited and getting recommended are two different things. Most “AI visibility” reports blend them together.

The numbers

We run the same set of questions through ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode every week. Then we record whether PushLeads is named in each answer. Here’s what the last 60 days look like when you split the questions by type.

Three very different results:

• Local agency questions: 12 of 12. Ask any of the engines for an SEO company in Asheville and we’re in the answer. That’s what years of local SEO and reviews get you.
• Topic questions: 110 of 219. These are questions about things we write and make videos about, like how AI picks sources or how to use video for SEO. Some of them aren’t about marketing at all. One of the posts AI sends the most visitors to is about the 2023 OpenAI boardroom fight.
• National buyer questions: 0 of 9. Questions like “best SEO agency for restoration contractors looking to get more water damage leads” or “who does the best SEO for roofing contractors in the Southeast.” These are the exact people we want to work with. The engines named other agencies, not us.

One more detail, to be fair to ourselves. In a late-August Google AI Overview check we did show up for a few of these buyer questions, including “best SEO agency for disaster restoration businesses.” Our question list was different then, so it’s not a perfect comparison. Since mid-September, though, it’s been zero.

Where most of our citations come from

Between October 18 and November 8, 823 of our 1,484 AI citations (55%) pointed to our YouTube videos, not our website. 160 of our 564 public videos were cited at least once. Almost all of that was Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. ChatGPT and Claude didn’t cite a single one of our videos in that window.

So video does get us cited. We covered that in the first article, and it’s still true. But a citation in an answer about a general topic is not the same as being named when someone asks who to hire.

What happened to the AI traffic

From September 17 to November 14, our site got 102 visits from AI tools: 34 from Gemini, 27 from Claude, 22 from ChatGPT and 19 from Perplexity. They landed mostly on blog posts. The top landing pages were that OpenAI post, our agency pricing guide, an AI SEO study, and a post about Google’s AI crawler.

None of the 102 visits turned into a lead.

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss. Our whole site had about 17,360 visits in that window and 20 conversions. That’s roughly 1 conversion per 870 visits. At that rate, 102 visits would be expected to produce about 0.1 conversions. So zero isn’t proof that AI visitors are worse than anyone else. It’s proof that 102 visits is too small, and that most of them were reading, not shopping.

Could AI be sending leads we can’t see?

Maybe. In the last 120 days we logged 82 leads. None were tagged as coming from AI. But 69 of them were tagged “direct” or “unknown.” Someone who hears about us in ChatGPT and then types our name into Google, or calls the number they saw, will never show up as an AI lead.

So we can’t say AI sent us zero business. We can only say we can’t prove it sent us any. If you’re checking your own numbers, start with how leads get tagged in the first place. We ran into the same problem with robocalls inflating lead counts: if the tracking is off, every decision after it is off too.

What this means for you

1. Split your AI questions by intent. Questions about topics, questions about your town, and “who should I hire” questions behave completely differently. A single mention count hides that.
2. Test the questions your buyers actually ask. For a contractor, that’s “best roofer near me,” “who fixes water damage near me,” or “is your company any good.” Not the questions you already know you rank for.
3. Check where AI visitors land. If they land on blog posts with no clear next step, they leave. Your service pages and your phone number need to be one click away.
4. Look at “direct” and “unknown” leads. Ask new customers how they found you. A short “how did you hear about us” question catches what analytics can’t.
5. Don’t confuse citations with recommendations. Being linked as a source is nice. Being named when someone asks who to hire is what pays.

What we’re changing

We’re shifting our content toward the questions contractors ask when they’re actually hiring: contracts, pricing, who owns the website, whether the reports can be trusted. We built a list of 55 of those questions from agency reviews, comparison pages and BBB records. Many of them had no good answer on our site yet. That’s the list we’re working through now, starting with videos like this one.

We’re also reporting buyer questions separately from everything else, so a big mention count can’t hide a zero where it matters. We’ll publish the next round of numbers when there’s enough data to say something real.

FAQ

Does being cited by ChatGPT or Google AI bring in leads?

Sometimes, but not automatically. In our case, AI search cited us often on general topics and named us in every Asheville agency question, but named us in 0 of 74 answers to national “best agency for restoration or roofing companies” questions. About 100 AI visits in 60 days produced no leads.

What’s the difference between being cited and being recommended?

A citation means the AI used your page or video as a source. A recommendation means it named your business when someone asked who to hire. You can have lots of the first and none of the second.

How do I know if AI is sending me customers?

Check your analytics for visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and claude.ai, and see which pages they land on. Then ask every new customer how they found you, because many AI-influenced leads show up as direct or unknown.

Is AI visibility worth paying for?

It depends on what’s being measured. If a report only shows how often you’re mentioned, ask which questions those mentions came from. The number that matters is how often you’re named when someone in your area asks who to hire.

Want to see your own numbers?

We’ll run the questions your buyers actually ask through ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity and show you where you’re named and where you’re not. Get a free audit.

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