Do homeowners really use AI to find contractors?

Some do, but nobody can tell you reliably how many in your trade and your cities. I don’t quote usage statistics, because I can’t vouch for one that applies to a homeowner in Vista looking for an electrician. You can measure it in your own business, and that is the number that should change your decisions.

What “using AI” covers

More than one behavior goes by that name, and they matter to you in different ways.

• Research before the call. A homeowner asks whether an old air conditioner is worth repairing, or what a panel upgrade involves. No company is being chosen yet, but the answer shapes what they ask for.
• Asking for names. Someone asks an assistant “who installs heat pumps in Encinitas” and gets a few companies back.
• Checking a name. They already have your company from a neighbor or from a truck on their street, and they ask an assistant what it knows about you.
• Without choosing to. A person who searches Google the way they always have may be shown an AI Overview, an AI-written summary at the top of the results. They never opened an assistant, but they read an AI answer.

The last one is why “do my customers use AI” is harder to answer than it sounds. Some of them do without thinking of it that way.

What isn’t known

For any single local market, the share of jobs that begin this way is unknown. Surveys record what people say they do, which can differ from what they do with water on the floor. It’s reasonable to expect habits to differ between an emergency repair and a solar purchase researched over several weeks, but that is an expectation, not a measurement. Treat any confident percentage with suspicion, including one that says nobody uses it.

How to measure it in your own business

Ask, and look at your own records. None of these methods is exact, but together they give a fair picture.

1. Add it to the question you already ask. When the office asks a caller how they found you, include “an AI assistant such as ChatGPT” among the options and write down the answer. People often say “Google” for anything on a screen, so a follow-up question helps.
2. Look at referrals in Google Analytics. When an assistant links to your site and the person clicks, the visit can appear with the assistant’s domain as its source. Not every visit is labeled this way, so read the count as a minimum.
3. Check whether you’d be found. Run the questions a customer would ask and see whether you’re named. If you’re never named, a low count of AI leads tells you nothing about demand.

The third step needs more than one try, because replies vary by assistant and by day. Begin with the prompts a local business should test. Running them on a schedule is what AI visibility tracking is for.

What to do with the answer

Let the size of the number set the size of the effort. If almost no callers mention an assistant and your analytics agree, you don’t need a separate program, and I’d tell you so. The foundations that help an assistant describe you correctly are the ones local SEO already needs: an accurate Google Business Profile, consistent business details, real reviews, and pages that answer one question each. You wouldn’t be paying for the same work twice.

If the number is small but rising from one check to the next, that is worth knowing early, and the same tracking will show it.

Whether assistants end up taking a large share of local searches is a separate question: is AI going to replace Google for finding local services. Nobody knows the answer to that one, which is the reason to rely on your own records and not on a forecast.