In July we published a page of lead source statistics: attribution data from real customer websites, positioned as more honest than the usual vendor survey because it showed its sample size, its limitations, and its cohort bias up front. The single most quoted number on that page was that phone taps made up 52.7% of recorded leads, the majority lead type. That's not the majority anymore, and it's worth explaining why rather than quietly updating the numbers.
What's different now
Across the current, larger sample of 26 real contributing sites, up from 9 in July, form submissions are now the majority lead type: 48.2% forms to 44.3% phone taps.
The main reason is real growth. The tracked cohort went from 9 trades and home-services sites managed by one agency to 26 sites that now include SaaS, agency, e-commerce, healthcare, and immigration-advisory businesses. Form-led businesses joined, and the average moved toward forms.
We checked whether that's actually what explains the reversal, rather than assuming. Recomputing phone share on the exact same 9 original sites, extended to the current window, phone taps are still running above 50% there, slightly higher than in July, not lower. The finding didn't reverse for those businesses. The mix of businesses changed underneath the headline number.
We also tightened how we exclude internal and test accounts from the tracked sample this refresh, which is a smaller factor behind the updated figures. The exact rule is published in full in the stats page methodology, so it's checkable against every future refresh.
The number that survives
Phone share by trade: 97.1% for plumbing (now across 2 sites and 623 leads, up from a single-site 98.1%), 70.7% for cleaning, 51.8% for locksmith and car keys, 36.5% for electrical, 18.6% for blinds and window furnishings, and 18.0% for painting. That range was always the more useful fact than any single headline average, and it's what the phone-versus-form section on the stats page leads with now, not the overall split.
Everything else that moved
Unpaid channels (organic search, direct, and referral combined) are now 67.9% of leads, up from 54% in July, as paid traffic's share fell from 46% to 32.1%. Direct traffic, leads with no referrer and no UTM data at all, rose from 19% to 24.1%. The lead journey shifted slightly longer: a median of 2 pages viewed before enquiry instead of 1, 1.8 minutes to enquiry instead of 1.6, and 83.6% converting on the first visit instead of 87%. Small movements individually, but they all point the same direction as the cohort broadens beyond fast-decision trade callouts.
Day-of-week and hour-of-day figures also needed a second look. Restricted to the Australian-majority sites in the cohort (mixing in real international traffic was distorting the "AEST" framing), Tuesday is now the busiest day, not Monday, though the weekday spread is much flatter than it was. Out-of-hours enquiries are 45.6% on that same Australian-only slice, close to the original 45% once you account for the two releases using slightly different definitions of business hours.
What we're holding back
We're not building a Google Ads search-term section this quarter, even though we could: 9 accounts now have Google Ads connected, but only 5 have enough resolved search-term data to be worth showing, and most of that is one site. We'll build that section once it reflects more than one business's keywords.
Full numbers, the by-trade breakdown, and the complete methodology are on the lead source statistics page itself, refreshed 7 September 2026. The CSV export has been updated to match. The next refresh is due in December.
