Stop Counting Clicks. Start Counting Mentions.
New research says your AI "ranking" is meaningless. But whether you show up at all? That matters.
New research just dropped that changes how we should think about marketing in real estate – and it has nothing to do with a new CRM or another social media platform.
Amanda Natividad – VP of Marketing at SparkToro and host of the Zero Click Marketing podcast – just had Rand Fishkin on as a guest to talk about his latest research on whether AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI mode give consistent answers when you ask them for recommendations.
His team got 600 volunteers to run the same prompts over and over. One of them? “Best LA Volvo dealerships.”
Swap “Volvo dealership” for “best real estate agent in [your suburb]” and it’s worth your attention.
The headline finding
Tracking your “ranking” in AI is pointless. The order changes almost every time.
But – and this is the interesting bit – some brands showed up nearly every time, regardless of order. Bose appeared in about 90% of headphone recommendations across every model. Others barely showed up at all.
So your position in an AI answer? Meaningless. Whether you appear at all? That’s the metric.
Rand called it AI visibility – the percentage of times your brand shows up when someone asks AI a question in your category.
What this means for agents
Think about how your potential sellers and buyers are already using AI.
“What should I look for in a selling agent in Paddington?”
“Who are the top agents in the Hills District?”
“What questions should I ask a real estate agent before listing?”
If your name, your agency, or your content shows up in those answers – even without a specific ranking – you’re in the consideration set. If it doesn’t, you’re invisible in a channel that’s only going to get bigger.
And here’s what Rand’s research confirmed: the brands that showed up consistently were the ones with strong visibility across multiple platforms. They had content. They had mentions. They had presence. The AI models were reflecting an existing environment of influence – not creating a new one.
The “zero click” problem is already here
Rand’s whole premise with Zero Click Marketing is that people don’t click through anymore. They stay on the platform they’re already on.
Sound familiar? Your buyers are scrolling Domain and REA, watching TikTok walkthroughs, reading suburb reviews on Reddit. They’re making decisions before they ever visit your website.
Zero-click marketing is the idea that your influence happens in places where nobody clicks a link back to you. And if you’re only measuring website traffic or email open rates, you’re measuring the wrong things.
So how do you measure something you can’t click on?
This is where most agents (and most marketers, honestly) get stuck. “If I can’t prove my Instagram posts got me a listing, why bother?”
Rand’s answer on the show was blunt: stop looking for proof. Look for correlation.
Run a content push in your area for 90 days. Track your appraisal requests. See if there’s a lift. You won’t be able to prove the content caused the calls – but you’ll see whether the timing lines up.
It’s the same way billboard companies have always measured success. Geographic lift over time. And the agents who are comfortable with “probably working” instead of “definitely proven” will invest where their competitors won’t.
Which, as Rand put it, leaves more room for the rest of us.
Two things you can do this week
Go to ChatGPT or Claude and type:
“Who are the best real estate agents in [your suburb]?”
Do it five times. Do it incognito. See if you show up. See who does.
That’s your AI visibility baseline. And if you’re not there yet – that’s not a problem. That’s an opportunity. Because most of your competitors haven’t even thought to check.
2. Start feeding the machine.
AI models learn about you from published content – articles, mentions, stories with your name attached.
That’s exactly what the tool I built, called Ailsa, does. One phone call becomes a published story on Elite Agent, with your name, your suburb, and your expertise attached to it. The kind of content AI tools pick up and reference.
Happy Hunting 🎉
Sam