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Marchex has announced a new AI search attribution capability within its Engage Platform, designed to close a critical visibility gap for marketers. This enhancement allows businesses to track, attribute, and analyze phone calls that originate directly from consumer queries in AI search assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—even when the customer never visits the company's website.
Marchex launched AI search attribution to track calls driven by LLMs like ChatGPT & Gemini.
It solves the "zero-click search" problem where customers call a number shown in an AI answer without visiting a website.
The capability combines Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI), AI Conversation Intelligence, AEO, and GA4 integration.
Businesses can identify which AI search engine sourced the call and measure intent, quality, and revenue outcomes.
Call events are pushed into Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for unified digital and offline analytics.
This provides a comprehensive attribution framework for the AI-first customer journey.
As AI assistants become a primary research tool for consumers, they often display business phone numbers directly within their answers. This creates a "zero-click" path to conversion where traditional web analytics fail, as the customer journey bypasses the website entirely. Marchex's new capability addresses this by using Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) specifically for LLMs, showing trackable phone numbers in AI-generated answers and attributing the resulting calls back to the source.
Troy Hartless, President and CRO at Marchex, explained the shift: “AI search is transforming how customers begin their journey. Our new capability helps businesses maintain visibility as discovery shifts toward AI-driven answers, giving them the clarity to understand how customer conversations begin and how they impact revenue.”
The solution integrates four key components to provide a complete picture. DNI enables call tracking from AI search surfaces. Marchex's AI-powered conversation intelligence then analyzes the call content for intent, outcome, and value. This data is combined with Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategies to improve visibility in AI results and is funneled into GA4, creating a single analytics view that unifies online digital activity with offline call outcomes.
This framework allows marketers to attribute revenue directly to AI search efforts, compare the performance of AI-driven calls against traditional digital channels, and optimize their AEO strategies based on concrete call quality and conversion data.
With this enhancement, organizations gain the ability to see AI-driven phone calls logged as specific events within GA4, tie them to broader campaigns or AEO initiatives, and track key call milestones. This level of attribution is critical for validating investments in AI search visibility and making informed decisions as consumer discovery behavior continues to evolve.
“By expanding our DNI capability to capture AI search activity, we provide organizations with a trusted way to measure performance, validate significantly increasing AEO efforts, and make better informed decisions as AI discovery continues to evolve,” added Hartless.
By providing visibility into this emerging channel, Marchex is defining the next chapter of marketing attribution, ensuring businesses can track and optimize the entire customer journey from AI-driven discovery to revenue-generating conversation.
About Marchex
Marchex harnesses the power of AI and conversation intelligence to provide actionable insights derived from prescriptive vertical-market data analytics. The Company enables organizations across business functions to optimize customer acquisitions and experiences, transforming conversations into valuable business outcomes. Marchex provides AI-powered conversation intelligence solutions for market-leading companies in leading B2B2C vertical markets, including many of the world’s most innovative and successful brands.
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