Being recommended by ChatGPT isn't the same as being paid

I’ve got nine screenshots of ChatGPT recommending my clients by name. They’re on the Pleiades site, with the exact question typed above each one, and you’re welcome to go and run those searches yourself.

They prove one thing. They prove that on a given day, for a given question, the assistant said that business’s name.

They don’t prove anybody rang.

So there’s a gap, and I think it’s the honest thing to lead with, because the industry I work in is currently selling the screenshot and hoping nobody asks about the second half.

What one real lead log shows

Mr Fresh Carpet Care in Fairfield, California is a client and he’s happy to be named, so I can show you this one rather than describing it vaguely.

Over roughly ten weeks, nine people enquired through the website form. The form asks how they found the business. Of those nine:

• Two said ChatGPT
• Two said Google Search
• Three said Yelp
• The other two said something else

Yelp is still the single biggest source on that log. I’m not going to bury that to make my own channel look better.

Here’s what makes those numbers mean something anyway. Before this engagement started, the business was getting no inbound form leads at all. Not from ChatGPT, not from Google. Nine where there were zero is the actual result, and the interesting part is that a channel that didn’t exist eighteen months ago arrived level with Google Search on its first outing.

What I won’t claim from it: that ChatGPT outperforms Google Search. Two and two is a tie on a log of nine, and anyone who turns that into a rate, a percentage or a trend is doing arithmetic the data can’t carry.

The part that closes the gap

On a Thursday in June the owner texted me twice, hours apart.

At midday: “Got a really good lead from ChatGPT today. I am currently on the job.”

That evening: “Job has been booked! I’m so excited.”

That’s one job. It’s the owner’s own account, not a system record, and I’d rather tell you that than dress it up. But it’s the only kind of evidence that actually answers the question under every sales call I’ve ever had, which is not “will I show up” but “will showing up turn into money”.

For context on what one of those is worth: water damage jobs in that trade run anywhere from $500 to $5,000. That’s a range describing the work, not an average and not revenue I’m claiming credit for.

What I’d do with this if I were you

Don’t buy the screenshot. Not from me, not from anyone.

Ask for the log. Ask the question that follows every citation: which enquiries came in, what did they say when you asked how they found you, and what happened to them.

If a vendor can show you a capture but can’t show you a source column, they’ve proved they can be seen. That’s genuinely the first step and it isn’t nothing. It just isn’t the thing you’re buying.

And if you’re the business rather than the vendor, the move is the same either way: put the source question on your form this week. In ten weeks you’ll have a log like the one above, and you’ll never again have to take anybody’s word for where your work comes from.

The honest summary

A citation is a leading indicator. A booked job is the thing.

I can evidence both on one client, in a small sample, with the limits printed. That’s the strongest version of this claim anybody in my niche can currently make truthfully, and I’d be suspicious of anyone making a bigger one.