Right now, Google still dominates online searches, with a 90% market share when its products like Google Lens, Google Local and YouTube are factored in, according to Martin Canchola, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Apartment SEO. 

“It's pretty clear that Google is obviously still the king of searches, with over 16.4 billion searches happening daily,” Canchola said at the National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize conference in New Orleans on June 19.

But artificial intelligence is quickly entering the mix. For instance, ChatGPT alone handles 2.5 billion prompts per day, and that number continues to rise, according to Canchola.

“Google still holds 90% of the market share, so that's where the largest network effect is,” Canchola said. “But still, these other large language models, AI search engines, are going to keep growing in the amount of traffic that they can produce for you. So it's going to be important to kind of keep a pulse on what that looks like.”

That’s because more and more residents will be turning to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or other platforms to find properties.

“Everyone's having their own personal journey [with AI],” Canchola said. “It's going to grow, and they're going to get more efficient and know more about how to use it. So we're going to constantly get more searches and more traffic and more engagement from these platforms.”

According to Canchola, with a couple of simple steps, multifamily operators can be ready to stand out in AI search.

Know the training models

To rank highly in search, apartment operators need to know where different AI platforms look for information. Unfortunately, different LLMs prioritize different sources for results, according to Canchola. 

For instance, ChatGPT looks heavily at Yelp, according to Canchola. “[Google’s] Gemini and AI mode, they're looking deep into the Google Business Profile, into the reviews, the proximity of the business to the user, the top 10 rankings and even YouTube,” he said.

Not surprisingly, Grok relies on X to train its LLM, according to Canchola. “Reddit, by far, is used by OpenAI and Google because they need to get what a real-life human experience is” and how they can use the model to train AI to “be more human-like,” Canchola said.

Even though AI tools prioritize different sources, there are some universal spots where apartment operators need to have a strong positive presence. 

Yelp, Google Business Profile, Google Maps and Apple Maps “are probably going to be some of the top listings you want to really be focusing on” and where AI models will be “looking for positive sentiment,” according to Canchola.

Tailor websites for AI

For apartment executives, the basics still matter in online search, beginning with the website. ”It starts with a good website that loads quickly, which helps build domain authority over time,” according to Canchola.

“That local Google Business Profile, and all the other listings, are where the individual community has such a big opportunity to thrive, even among the ILS [internet listing services],” Canchola said.

But today, apartment operators also need to think about building websites that “AI agents actually like,” according to Canchola. For instance, Google recently advised that large language text files may be worth incorporating into a website.

“Other things like AI summaries to tell the AI agent what to do — all these are coming into play,” Canchola said.

With Google deprecating the Q&A function on its business profiles, Canchola said it is more important than ever for apartment operators to have frequently asked questions on their sites.

If these property website FAQs, and even blog posts, address information gaps, they can be valuable in search. “We added FAQs to address questions that we saw in the chat logs and in the reviews,” Anne Baum, vice president of marketing at Towne Properties, said at Apartmentalize.

Utilize video

It takes more than having the right words on a website to rank at the top of search results. “AI actually prioritizes video,” Marge Enrique, senior director of marketing at Westhome Property Management, said at Apartmentalize.

Gemini, specifically, has a preference for video because of its relationship with Google and YouTube, according to Enrique. “When you publish a video on YouTube, it gets indexed and it gets picked up in less than five hours — sometimes instantly,” Enrique said. “That's the beauty of the video.”

Videos require a good amount of upfront work, but they can pay off in the long run. “Once you have a system in place, and you can start launching these videos for very specific themes and prompts and things like that, you're going to be off to the races,” Enrique said. “That’s a big deal, especially when you're thinking about Gemini and YouTube.”

Westhome Property Management’s team uploaded imagery into AI and used an outside company to produce a video for one property. “[AI] actually has the ability to put in actual people, just as if you shot it into the video, and it created a 20- or 30-second video for us,” Enrique said.

Producing and posting the video were multistep processes. But, in the end, it was worth it for Westhorne. “We went from not being searched on AI or in AI, and then we saw our engagement rate go up to 168 users in AI,” Enrique said.

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