How to Track Where Your Enquiries Come From: A Simple System for Local Businesses

The phone rings and someone wants a quote. A form comes in overnight. A WhatsApp message arrives on Sunday. Was that Google, the van, your Facebook page, or the neighbour you did a job for last spring? If you pay for marketing, or give up evenings to it, not knowing is expensive: you can’t tell which parts to keep.

Fixing that takes one joined-up habit and a few settings, not perfect data or an analytics qualification:

1. Ask every enquirer how they found you, and write it down.
2. Let Google Analytics count website enquiries and show where they came from.
3. Tag the links you control, such as your Business Profile, social bios and QR codes.
4. Check your Google Business Profile for Maps calls and direction requests.
5. Add call tracking only if it’s worth it, within Google’s rules.
6. Treat every number as a guide, not a verdict.

This is written for owners, not analysts: where a step needs a web designer, we say what to ask for. You’ll need Google Analytics access (or the name of whoever set it up), your Business Profile login and a spreadsheet. With no analytics at all, Step 1 still works. Menu names match Google’s help pages in September 2026, and Google moves things around.

Step 1: Ask every enquirer, and keep an enquiry log

Software can’t see a walk-in, a recommendation over the garden fence, or someone who saw your van and rang the number on the side. Your customers can tell you.

An enquiry log is a list of every enquiry, however it arrived. This is our advice, not an official method, and a spreadsheet is plenty. The columns we’d use:

Column	What goes in it
Date	When the enquiry arrived
Name	Who it was
Contact method	Call, form, email, WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram message, walk-in
How they found you	Their answer, in their words
Channel	Your tidy bucket (see below)
What they wanted	The job or service
Outcome	Quote sent, booked, lost
Value	What the job was worth, if it went ahead

Keep the channel buckets short and consistent: Google search, Google Maps, ChatGPT or another AI tool, Facebook or Instagram, recommended by someone, saw the van or a sign, used us before, ads, other. Add the same options to your website form as a required drop-down, so form enquiries answer the question for you.

People misremember, and “I found you on Google” can mean the map, the website or an ad. A quick follow-up (“Was that on the map, or did you click through to our website?”) usually settles it.

Here’s a made-up example. Ridgeway Physio, an invented clinic, logs a Tuesday call: new patient, knee pain, found us on Google, “the map with the reviews”, channel Google Maps, booked, value of the first course of treatment. After a month, the log shows which buckets bring booked work as well as enquiries. No Google tool can tell you that.

It’s the “write the answer down” habit from our guide to how long SEO takes, built out into a system.

Step 2: Count website enquiries in Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s free tool for seeing what visitors do on your website. It records events: things that happen, such as a page loading or a form being sent. The events you care about most can be marked as key events. Google renamed “conversions” to “key events” on 27 March 2024, and “conversion” now means something you measure for ads. Older guides still say “conversions”.

To measure a key event, Google says “you must create or identify an event that measures the important user interaction and then mark the event as a key event.” For enquiries, there are three common ways to do that.

Route A: a thank-you page (the easiest to trust)

If your form sends people to a separate thank-you page after a successful send, you can count visits to that page as enquiries, with no code. Google’s page on creating key events walks through it: in Admin, go to Events, create a new event from page views of your thank-you page’s address, and switch on “Mark as key event”. Google’s own example uses this to “see the number of people who successfully submit their contact information.”

Don’t mark the general page-view event instead, or “all pageviews will then count as key events”, and Google says to “avoid modifying the page_view event”.

Many forms show a “thanks” message on the same page instead. If yours does, ask your web person for a real thank-you page, and make sure its address never includes the person’s name or email. Google’s analytics help is blunt that you’re “required to ensure that no personally identifiable information is collected.”

Route B: GA4’s built-in form events

GA4 has an enhanced measurement setting that needs no code changes and includes two form events: form_start, logged “the first time a user interacts with a form in a session”, and form_submit, logged “when the user submits a form”. You can mark form_submit as a key event.

Google doesn’t say whether it counts only successful submissions or works with every form. So test it (our rule, not Google’s): send a real enquiry and a deliberately broken one, such as a missing required field. If the event doesn’t appear, or appears when the form errored, use Route A.

Route C: taps on your phone number and email address

A web designer or developer can set up an event that fires when someone taps your phone number or email address, usually with Google Tag Manager, and mark it as a key event.

But a tap isn’t a call. Someone can tap and hang up, or tap by accident.

What to ask your web person for

• “Is GA4 installed, and can I have access with my own Google account?”
• “Please send successful form enquiries to a thank-you page, and set that up as a key event.”
• “Please set up taps on our phone number and email address as key events.”
• “Please add a required ‘How did you hear about us?’ drop-down to the form.”

If they want a standard name for the enquiry event, Google’s suggestion is generate_lead.

Check it worked: send a test enquiry from your phone. Google says Realtime reports update “a few minutes after” a key event happens, while standard reports can take up to 24 hours. Marking an event as a key event “doesn’t change historic data”, so counting starts from the day it’s set up.

Step 3: See which channels enquiries came from

GA4 sorts visits into channels, broad groups based on where a visitor came from. The Traffic acquisition report (under Reports, then Acquisition) is “designed to help you understand where your website and app visitors are coming from”. Look at which channels your enquiry key events sit against.

These are the default channels an owner will meet most:

Channel	What Google says it covers	What it usually means for you
Organic Search	Non-ad links in search results, “including Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode”	People who found your site through a search engine
AI Assistant	Visits “from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok”	An AI tool linked to you
Direct	Arrivals “via a saved link or by entering your URL”	People who already knew you, plus visits GA4 can’t place
Organic Social	Non-ad links on social sites	Your Facebook, Instagram and similar
Referral	Links on other sites, such as blogs or news sites	Someone else’s website sent them
Unassigned	Traffic no rule matches	Often a labelling problem worth checking

The AI Assistant channel is new. Google added it on 13 May 2026 to show how people find sites “through chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude”. Google also says channel definitions “may evolve”, so expect more changes.

OpenAI’s publisher FAQ says ChatGPT “automatically includes the UTM parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com in referral URLs”. So look for the AI Assistant channel or a source of chatgpt.com; Google doesn’t say which one those visits always land in. When an AI tool mentions you without a link, the person may just search your name or ring you, and only your log will know. (On why AI tools pick some local businesses over others, see why ChatGPT recommends your competitor.)

Step 4: Tag the links you control

UTM parameters are short labels added to the end of a web address, telling GA4 exactly where a visit came from. Google’s URL builder guide explains them, and says that when you add them “you should always use utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign.”

Tag any link you put out yourself: the website link on your Google Business Profile, your Facebook and Instagram bios and posts, your email signature and newsletter, and QR codes on vans, flyers, signs and business cards.

For your Business Profile, this is what we’d use:

https://www.yoursite.co.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp-listing

Our reasoning: under Google’s channel rules, a visit whose medium “exactly matches organic” goes into Organic Search, so these visits stay where they belong, and the campaign name separates profile clicks from ordinary search clicks. That’s our reading of the rules, not a Google recommendation. Google’s Business Profile guidelines don’t mention tracking tags either way, though some local SEO guides recommend them. Whatever you do, make sure the tagged link lands directly on your own page without redirecting, because the guidelines ban links that “redirect or ‘refer’ users” elsewhere.

The same rules cover the other links. A medium of social puts bio clicks in Organic Social, and a medium of email puts signature and newsletter clicks in Email. Nothing in the rules matches a QR code, so our reading is that a made-up medium such as qr will show as Unassigned in the channel view. You’ll still find those visits by source or campaign name. (For how a Facebook page and a website work together, see Facebook page vs website.)

Google says values “are case sensitive”, so Facebook and facebook show as two sources. Our rules: lowercase every time, one name per platform, and a list of the links you’ve made so you don’t invent a new spelling in six months.

Check it worked: click your tagged link, then look for the source and campaign in GA4’s Realtime report.

Step 5: Check your Business Profile for Maps calls and directions

Plenty of local enquiries never reach your website. Someone sees your listing on the map and taps “Call” or “Directions”. Those actions live in your Business Profile performance report, which you can open from Google Search (search your business, then Performance) or from the Maps app.

Three things to know first:

• It’s “available only for verified Business Profiles.” If yours isn’t, start with our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile.
• Google defines “Calls” as “the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile”. That’s a tap, not an answered call.
• The figures cover “both organic search results and Google Ads”, so paid and unpaid activity sit together. Our SEO vs PPC comparison explains the difference.

You’ll also see direction requests, website clicks, messages and bookings. What you won’t see is a list of who called. Google’s help page says that as of 31 July 2024 you can no longer “find customer call history from your Business Profile.” That gap is one more reason the enquiry log matters.

Since 8 June 2026 you can also link your Business Profile to GA4, from Admin under Product links. It’s optional and limited: the data covers only the last 6 months, several profiles are added together, and you need Editor or Administrator access in GA4 plus Owner or Manager access on the profile.

Step 6: Consider call tracking (optional)

A call tracking number is a separate phone number, usually supplied by a call-tracking service, that forwards to your normal line and logs each call made to it. Give each advert, listing or page its own number and you can see which one a call came from. Unlike a tap count, it logs calls that were actually dialled.

Our view: consider it if most of your work comes by phone and you spend on more than one channel. A one-van business that asks every caller may find the log enough.

If you do use one on your Business Profile, Google’s guidelines set the limits:

• “The phone number must be under the direct control of the business.”
• “Use a local phone number instead of a central call centre helpline number whenever possible.”
• “Premium phone numbers are not acceptable”.
• The number must connect to your business, not redirect people elsewhere.

Google also lets you add “up to two more phone numbers” alongside your primary one. In Google’s community forum, one of its volunteer Product Experts has suggested putting the tracking number as primary and your main number as an additional number. That’s community advice, not Google policy, and Google’s guidelines don’t mention tracking numbers directly.

Keep your main number the same on your website, directories and signage. Our Google 3-pack guide explains why consistent business details matter for the map results.

Where Search Console fits

Google Search Console shows which searches your website appeared for and how often people clicked. Enquiries aren’t in it.

One feature does help: Search Console can split branded searches (your business name) from everything else. We’d treat a rise in branded searches as a rough sign that word of mouth, the van or a recommendation is working. Google warns that “Some queries might be incorrectly identified”, and the filter isn’t available for sites with few impressions. Our Search Console guide for beginners covers setup and the reports.

Why the numbers never quite add up

Your log, GA4 and your Business Profile will disagree. That’s normal.

Cookie choices. UK cookie rules changed under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, with the new rule in force from 5 February 2026. The ICO finalised its guidance on 29 April 2026. Some analytics can now run without consent, but only under strict conditions, and the ICO says the exception “is not for identifying, tracking or monitoring people”. Don’t assume GA4 qualifies. Ask whoever set up your analytics whether yours meets the conditions, or keep it behind your banner. Check 10 in our website health check covers the banner and the new rules.

When a visitor declines, Google’s consent mode page says “No Analytics cookies are set”. Depending on the set-up, GA4 then collects nothing from that visitor, or only anonymous signals it uses to estimate the gap. Either way, key events undercount real enquiries.

Direct and branded visits. Someone hears about you from a friend, searches your name, and enquires. GA4 files that as Organic Search or Direct, not “recommendation”. Only the log knows.

Maps calls. A call from your map listing never touches your website, so GA4 can’t see it. It’s a tap in your Business Profile and, if you asked, a line in your log.

Messages. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram messages and direct emails bypass your website entirely. Tagged bio links track visits; the messages only reach your log.

Double counting. The same person might tap your number, then fill in the form a day later. Key events and taps count actions, so one customer can show up twice.

A better tool won’t fix this. Read the log and the reports side by side, and trust trends over single figures.

Your 15-minute monthly review

Our suggested routine:

1. Enquiry log: totals by channel, and which channels turned into booked work.
2. GA4: key events by channel in Traffic acquisition. Any Unassigned traffic to tidy up?
3. Business Profile performance: calls, direction requests and website clicks.
4. Search Console: clicks, and branded searches if you have the filter.
5. Compare: with last month and the same month last year, so seasonal swings don’t fool you.

Look for agreement. If the log says Maps is busy and the Business Profile shows more calls, the trend is probably real. If they disagree, check your tags, forms and questions before changing your marketing.

Working with Get Found

Get Found is a local SEO, AI SEO and web design agency in Worcester and Stockport. Sites we build are tracked from launch day, with Search Console, analytics and your Google Business Profile linked up. Local SEO clients get a short monthly report covering their geo-grid, calls and direction requests.

Our free visibility audit checks where you appear on Google, on Maps and in the main AI tools. To talk through your tracking, get in touch.