[Google Business Profile] Add advanced analytics for AI-driven discovery

I’ve been noticing something strange across a few local businesses recently and I’m curious if anyone else is seeing the same thing. Maps rankings are stable. Leads are roughly the same year over year. But the way people *discover* the business feels different. Owners keep telling me things like: Someone said they found us through ChatGPT. Traffic is slightly down but rankings didn’t move. People calling already know exactly what they want. What’s odd is that none of this shows up cleanly in analytics. There isn’t a new traffic channel. There’s no attribution source for it. And asking customers how they found the business gives very vague answers now. It almost feels like discovery is happening earlier somewhere else before people even get to Google Maps or Search. I’ve been trying to figure out what signals might actually point to that. A few things I’ve been experimenting with tracking: • Branded searches increasing without ranking changes • Direct traffic rising without any obvious campaign • Mentions of the brand showing up in forums, reviews, and local discussions • Customers arriving more decision ready instead of research mode Right now it feels like we’re trying to optimize for something we can’t even properly observe yet. I’ve actually been experimenting with ways to track how local businesses show up inside AI tools just to see if there’s any pattern there. Still early and mostly research. Curious if anyone here is seeing similar signals with their clients. Are you tracking anything new lately because of AI search or GEO? And if you could build the perfect way to measure this, what would you want it to show? If anyone else is digging into this space I’d honestly love to compare notes.