Is ChatGPT worth optimising for if you are a tradesman?

Aug 27, 2026

Short answer: not on its own, not yet, and anyone selling you a ChatGPT package as a separate service is selling you something you get for free by doing the ordinary work properly.

Longer answer, with the numbers, because the direction of travel is real and the people ignoring it entirely are also wrong.

The numbers that make people panic

Ofcom's Online Nation report, 10 December 2025, is the best UK source there is.

ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025. In the same period of 2024 it had 368 million. That is roughly five times the traffic in twelve months.

Growth like that is why every marketing company in the country suddenly has a ChatGPT offer.

The numbers that should calm you down

The same report puts Google Search at 82% of UK adults, and 3 billion searches a month in the UK.

Read those two together. Google does more searches in a month than ChatGPT had visits in eight. And a visit is not a search, it is somebody opening the site, which might be one question or forty.

More to the point, most of what people use ChatGPT for is not finding a local tradesman. It is writing, summarising, coding, homework and general questions. Nobody publishes a figure for what share of ChatGPT use is somebody looking for a plumber in their town, and I have looked. If a marketer quotes you one, ask them where it came from.

The bit that actually matters

Here is what I think is true, and I will flag it clearly as judgement rather than data.

The thing to optimise for is not ChatGPT. It is being the business a machine is confident recommending. That is one job, and it pays off across all of them: Google's AI summaries, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and whatever turns up next.

And the work is not exotic. It is:

A Google Business Profile that is actually finished, with categories, services, real photos and reviews arriving regularly
The same name, address, phone and hours everywhere you appear
Pages on your own site that answer one clear question each, in plain sentences
Being listed on the directories and review sites that these models read
Reviews, continuously, not a burst two years ago

You will notice that is the same list as local SEO. That is the point. There is no separate ChatGPT lever.

Ofcom's other finding matters here too: about 30% of Google searches now show an AI summary, and 53% of UK adults say they see them often, mostly without asking for them. So the AI layer reaches far more people through Google than through ChatGPT. If you were going to care about one, care about that one, and you get it from the same work.

What we have seen

Google's AI Overview cites our client LMB Plumbing and Heating by name. We monitor it rather than screenshot it once, because it moves week to week.

We did nothing ChatGPT-specific to get it. It came out of the ordinary work: the profile, the pages, consistent details, reviews.

So what would I actually do

If you have £500 to spend and you are choosing between "ChatGPT optimisation" and finishing your Google Business Profile properly, finish the profile. It is not close.

If the basics are genuinely done, then the useful next step is measurement, not optimisation. Find out what the machines currently say when somebody asks for your trade in your town. Write it down. Check it monthly. You cannot improve a position you have never looked at, and most trades have never looked.

What this article does not claim

The ChatGPT figure is visits, not users, and covers January to August 2025 only.
Nobody, including Ofcom, publishes what share of AI use is people looking for local tradespeople. Any number you see for that is invented.
"There is no separate ChatGPT lever" is my judgement from running this for our clients, not a finding from a study.
The LMB AI Overview citation is real and monitored. AI results are volatile and no agency can promise one.
Ofcom's AI overview percentage is a snapshot. Google changes it constantly.

Sources

Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, published 10 December 2025. All visit, search and AI summary figures are Ofcom's.
First-party: BetterWays monitoring of Google AI Overview citations for LMB Plumbing and Heating.