Your next buyer or seller may ask ChatGPT for an agent. Will your name come up?

For years, real estate agents competed for online visibility by mastering Google, building websites, optimizing pages, collecting reviews and fighting for the top spots in search results.Now there is another visibility challenge; getting recommended by artificial intelligence (AI). A buyer who once searched Google for “best listing agent in Scottsdale” can now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity the same question and receive a short list of names.For agents, the shift changes the goal from simply ranking in search to becoming someone an AI system can identify, understand and confidently recommend.Shayan Hamidi — founder and CEO of Rechat — said agents need to rethink their approach to online discovery.“If you’re running a business and if you’re a real estate agent and you want to be found and recommended, you want to be recommended through these [AI platforms],” he told HousingWire. “So, you actually want to shift your focus from so much of, ‘Hey, how do I really just get my SEO right, to how do I really show up within these answers?’” Mike Stensrud — founder of AgentEdgeAI — a consulting practice that helps agents improve visibility on AI search platforms, said his own testing produ...