Check out our new The REAL AI Podcast for this week – Episode 17 3/9/26 – AI generated with hosts Miles and Grace
REAL AI: AI Visibility is a bunch of hooey, AI stats and facts, headlines, and AI quote of the week
By Kevin Hawkins with Korey Hawkins | March 9, 2026 – Vol. 4 Issue 10
REAL AI is the industry’s first and most popular weekly newsletter that helps real estate pros keep up with the most relevant developments in AI to save time, stay informed, and use technology that actually helps their business today.
Buy The REAL AI Guide for Real Estate Agents for the best AI cheat codes – on Amazon here.
AI visibility
If you spend any time on LinkedIn these days or reading one of the real estate trades, you might think SEO is dead or dying and that something called “AI visibility” has replaced it.
The pitch usually goes like this: Pay a company a monthly fee, or a flat amount, and they’ll either teach you how or provide a service to make sure ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude recommend you when someone asks a question like “Who’s the best real estate agent in Broward County?”
Sounds great. There’s just one problem.
Nobody can prove it works. At least consistently.
The personalization problem
Let’s start with the nature of AI itself. Chatbots are not static search engines. Their answers change based on personalization, conversation context, training updates, and even randomness in how the model generates responses.
Ask the same question twice, and you may get two different answers. Ask it tomorrow, and you might get a third.
That makes the idea of “locking in visibility” inside a chatbot extremely questionable.
Look at the research
A new analysis from SparkToro that examined search behavior across 41 major websites found that traditional search still dwarfs AI chatbots in terms of how people actually find information online.
Google alone handles roughly 14 BILLION searches a day, while ChatGPT handles only a tiny fraction of that volume.
This in-depth study shows Google accounts for 73.7% of search activity. Add YouTube’s 3.65% (owned by Google), and it shows Google controls 77.35% of measured search activity.
Compare that to ChatGPT’s 2.836% share, and the scale difference becomes clear. Google’s ecosystem generates about 27 times more search activity than ChatGPT. This puts today’s rush to “optimize for AI chatbots” into a very different perspective.
Even when you combine multiple AI tools, visits to chatbot platforms account for less than 1% of web activity, while traditional search engines account for roughly 11% of all website visits.
In other words, almost all discoveries today still happen through Google, Bing, Yahoo, social media, and major platforms like YouTube and Amazon.
Put AEO and GEO in perspective
That doesn’t mean AI search is irrelevant. It’s growing quickly and can complement your SEO strategy. But today, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) remains a tiny slice of the discovery pie.
So, before you shift your spend to “optimize” for AI chatbots, consider the research. If you are still convinced things could change rapidly, ask a few practical questions.
Can the vendor prove their work changes chatbot answers consistently? Can they show repeatable results across different users and prompts? And most importantly, does the traffic potential justify the cost?
AI visibility will become a valid marketing channel someday. But right now, it should not be a siloed activity. AI visibility is best used as an add-on to SEO, not a replacement. I’d remain skeptical about paying a separate fee for it because today, it feels more like hype than strategy.
In other words, before chasing the newest shiny AI object, make sure it’s actually delivering something of measurable and ongoing value. (-Kevin)
AI Facts and Stats
1. 92% of agents surveyed said they are either already using AI or plan to use it soon.
2. 34% of agents said that AI saves them one to three hours of time per week.
3. 31% of agents surveyed stated they are confident in using AI-generated content with clients.
4. 63% of agents surveyed state that AI’s strongest value in their business is improving communication.
5. 17% of agents surveyed admitted their biggest barrier to using AI more regularly is not having enough training.
Source: RPR 2026 AI Adoption Survey (-Korey)
AI Headlines
Homebuyers have another thing to worry about. This time, it’s ‘housefishing.’ | 3/4/26 Business Insider
There’s a fine line between helping and deceiving homebuyers with AI-enhanced photos.
US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material | 3/2/26 The Daily Record
A major setback for AI development and use in creative work.
AI Advertising Guardrails Are Coming. Real Estate Should Not Be Left Behind | 3/2/26 WAV Group
It’s time for real estate to establish a unified advertising framework for AI.
Enterprise AI is still in its experimental era | 3/4/26 Axios
Many companies are struggling to integrate AI into their existing business workflow.
Anthropic’s Claude can now absorb your past conversations with other AI chatbots | 3/4/26 Engadget
Claude’s new memory tool provides an easy way to switch over from another chatbot.
OpenAI launches GPT-5.4 with native computer use mode, financial plugins for Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets | 3/5/26 VentureBeat
ChatGPT’s newest model has native computer use, the ability to work directly in Excel and Google Sheets, and more.
NotebookLM’s Video Overviews Just Got Better Thanks to a Trifecta of Google’s AI Models | 3/4/26 CNET
Cinematic Video Overviews uses Gemini, Nano Banana, and Veo to create fully animated video explanations. (-Korey)
AI Quote of the Week
Use AI the BEST way as it is the SAFEST way: Buy The REAL AI Guide and learn why.
QUICK: share this link with a friend – our free weekly newsletter Real AI.