Hi Reader

I typed "who's the best real estate agent in Carlsbad, CA" into ChatGPT last week.

It named three agents. Confidently. With reasons for each one.

None of them were the top producer in that market. I checked.

So I asked where it got that. It told me: reviews, mostly. What people had written about those agents on Google and Zillow, plus whatever else it could find with their names attached.

Now, the honest part. I am about to tell you that online reviews matter, which is possibly the least original thing anyone has ever said to a real estate agent. You've heard it at every conference since 2011. Someone in a headset told you from a stage to text your past clients. You nodded.

I'm not going to pretend it's new. What I'm telling you is that the stakes have changed.

For fifteen years, reviews were a tiebreaker. A seller had already decided to call you, then glanced at your Google profile to make sure you weren't a disaster. The reviews confirmed a decision that was mostly already made.

That's not the job anymore. AI tools don't hand somebody a list of ten links to sort through. They pick. And when a chatbot decides which three names to say out loud, it assembles that answer out of what the internet says about you. Which are your reviews.

(If you want the whole picture of how search split into three different jobs, I wrote it up here: SEO, AEO, and GEO for real estate. Short version: SEO gets you on the list, AEO makes you the answer, GEO gets you named.)

I don't think the three it picked are doing anything clever. They just have more reviews, and more of those reviews name an actual neighborhood instead of saying "Susan was great."

Old advice. New stakes.

The 5-Minute Reputation Audit.

First, log out of ChatGPT. Or open a Temporary Chat, or an incognito window. Logged in, it already knows who you are, and it'll hand you back your own information dressed up as research. You want the answer a stranger gets.

Then paste these one at a time, with your details filled in:

1. "Who are the best real estate agents in [your city]?"
2. "Who should I hire to sell my home in [your ZIP code]?"
3. "What do people say about [your full name], realtor in [your city]?"

Did your name come up at all in the answers to the first two? If it did, what did it say about you? And where did it say it got that?

Whatever comes back on the third one is what a seller finds when they check you out. Might be great. Might be four years old.

Take your worst answer and fix one input. Usually that means asking three past clients for a review, and asking them to name the neighborhood while they're at it. "She helped us buy in Calavera Hills" beats five stars and no words, because the neighborhood is what the buyer typed in the first place.

Three asks. Ten minutes.

Reply and tell me what ChatGPT said about you. I read every one, and I'm genuinely curious how it responds across the board.

One more thing, and I'd rather say it straight than be cute about it. There's a site called HomeCode, basically Yelp for real estate tech. Troy Palmquist built it, and it has real reviews on 150+ tools. Absolutely worth a look before you sign a contract with any vendor. RealScout is on there, so yes, if you're a RealScout customer, I'd love a review because this advice isn't just for real estate agents.

Enjoy your weekend!
Alice
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The Heist · Marketing playbooks for real estate agents, stolen from every industry except this one.

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