How to show up on Google and ChatGPT

The short answer

SEO gets you found in Google’s results. GEO gets you named when a seller asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers who to use in your suburb. These tools recommend the agents they can find clear, consistent and recent evidence about: your own website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your portal profiles. The agents who get named are usually the ones who make those facts easy to find and easy to agree on.

What are SEO and GEO?

When a seller types “who’s the best agent to sell my house in Coorparoo?” into ChatGPT, or sees an AI summary at the top of a Google search, the tool writes an answer. Some agents are named in it. Most aren’t.

How often, and how well, you’re named in those answers is called GEO, short for generative engine optimisation. It’s the same idea as SEO (search engine optimisation), applied to AI answers instead of a list of links.

It isn’t a separate world from Google. Google’s AI answers draw on Google’s own search index, and ChatGPT and Claude can search the web when they answer. Good, clear information about you helps in all of them.

Why it matters for agents now

Sellers have always checked agents online before calling. What’s changed is where they look. Many now ask an AI tool for a shortlist, and Google shows AI-written summaries above the regular results for many questions.

An AI answer usually names only a handful of agents. If you’re not among them, the seller may never scroll far enough to find your profile.

The good news: most agents haven’t done anything about this yet. In most suburbs, the bar is low.

How do AI tools choose which agent to name?

They look for agents with specific, recent and consistent evidence across several sources, then summarise what agrees.

The sources that matter most for real estate agents:

1. Your own website. The one place you control completely. AI tools can quote a page that says plainly where you sell, what you’ve sold recently, your median days on market and what sellers said. Generic agency profiles rarely give them that.
2. Your Google Business Profile. A strong local signal for Google’s AI in particular. Your suburbs, categories, photos, posts and reviews all count.
3. Reviews. On Google, on the portals and on review platforms. Volume helps, but specifics help more: reviews that mention the suburb, the result and how you communicated.
4. Portal profiles. Your Domain and realestate.com.au agent pages are often cited as sources, because they hold sales data.
5. Consistency. Your name, agency, suburbs and phone number should match everywhere. Conflicting details make an AI tool less confident about you.
6. Local mentions. Local news, community sponsorships and suburb-specific articles add context about who is active where.

Test yourself in ten minutes

You can check where you stand today, for free. To get an honest result:

• Use a private or incognito window, logged out, so your own history doesn’t shape the answer.
• Make sure you’re browsing from Australia. Location changes the answers.
• Ask each question the same way every time, and note the date. AI answers vary from one try to the next.

Then ask these ten questions in ChatGPT, Claude and Google, filling in your suburb and name:

1. Who’s the best real estate agent in [suburb]?
2. Who should I use to sell my house in [suburb]?
3. Which agent sells the most homes in [suburb]?
4. Best agent to sell a [house type] in [suburb]?
5. Which agent gets the best prices in [suburb]?
6. [Your name] real estate reviews
7. Is [your name] a good real estate agent?
8. How much is my house worth in [suburb]?
9. [Suburb] house prices this year
10. Who should I call for an appraisal in [suburb]?

Mark each one: named (you’re recommended), mentioned (you appear, but not as a recommendation) or missing. That’s your baseline. Our Free Google Check runs three of these on Google’s AI for you and scores the result in about 30 seconds.

Twelve things that help you show up on Google and ChatGPT

This week, on your own

1. Claim your Google Business Profile, choose “Real estate agent” as your category, and list the suburbs you serve.
2. Make your name, agency and mobile number identical on your agency profile, the portals and Google.
3. Ask your last ten sellers for a Google review, and ask them to mention the suburb and what you did.
4. Reply to every review, briefly and personally.
5. Post a recent sale or a suburb update on your Google Business Profile.
6. Check that your portal profiles show your current agency, suburbs and a recent photo.

On your website

7. State plainly, near the top of your homepage, who you are, your agency, and the suburbs you sell in.
8. Show recent sold results with dates, prices (where public) and days on market, and keep them current.
9. Publish a page for each main suburb with this quarter’s median price, days on market and your recent sales there.
10. Answer the questions sellers actually ask, in plain sentences an AI tool can quote.
11. Add structured data, the behind-the-scenes labels that tell search engines you’re a real estate agent and where you work.
12. Make sure your site loads fast on a phone and doesn’t block search engines or AI crawlers. Your web person can check this in minutes.

What doesn’t work

• Fake or incentivised reviews. They breach Australian Consumer Law and review platforms remove them. AI tools also discount reviews that look manufactured.
• Claiming to be number one without proof. Misleading claims are a legal risk for agents, and they don’t help AI tools trust you.
• Pages stuffed with keywords. “Best agent Rose Bay” repeated forty times tells a seller nothing, and AI tools look for facts, not phrases.
• Mass-produced AI articles. Pages with no real local facts add nothing an AI tool can use.
• Anyone who guarantees a ranking or an AI mention. Nobody controls these answers. Ask what they’ll measure instead.

How long it takes, and how to measure it

Searches for your own name usually improve within two to six weeks of a well-built site going live. Suburb searches and AI answers take longer, typically two to six months, depending on how competitive your area is.

Measure it the same way each month: the same ten questions, the same tools, the same conditions. Track how many answers name you, mention you or miss you. The trend matters more than any single answer.

That’s exactly what our Growth plan reports every month. If you’d rather do it yourself, the ten questions above are a good start.

Questions