Getting found as an estate agent on Google and in AI: the guide

Where people search: Google, portals and AI assistants

People who want to buy or sell a home search in three places. Each one needs a different approach.

Portals are strong on listings. You won't beat them there, and you don't need to. A buyer who sees your property on Immoweb often searches for your agency name afterwards. Your website needs to be there.

A seller behaves differently. Someone looking for an estate agent rarely goes to a portal. They search on Google or ask an AI assistant. For an agency, that is the most valuable visitor. And they are looking for you, not for a property.

That is your opportunity. To see how your website and the portals work together, read our article on your website alongside Immoweb.

What your website must do technically

A website that wants to be found is fast, works on mobile and gives Google clear information. Without that foundation, no text will help.

Speed and ease of use. Google says its ranking systems aim to reward content with a good user experience, and that Core Web Vitals count towards that. Relevance still comes first. Google shows the most relevant content, even if the experience is poorer. Speed makes the difference when several good pages compete for the same search. For estate agents in the same region, that is often the case.

Mobile first. 70 to 80% of visitors to a property website come on mobile. Google uses the mobile version of your site to index and rank it. What is missing on mobile does not count. Make sure your mobile site has the same content as your desktop site.

Structured data. Structured data is a standard way to tell Google what is on a page. A price, an address, a type of home. Google calls it explicit clues about the meaning of a page, and recommends the JSON-LD format. It does not guarantee a special display in search results. It does help Google read your page correctly.

Individual property pages instead of a widget. This is the classic mistake. Many agency sites show their listings through a third-party widget or iframe. It looks fine to your visitor. But for Google and AI search engines, your properties are not individual pages on your website. Every property deserves its own page, with its own address, its own title and the description from your real estate CRM.

Test your own site in three steps:

1. Open a property and look at the address bar. The address should be on your own domain name, with its own path for that property.
2. Search Google for your agency name and the street of a property. If you find the property page on your own site, it is in Google.
3. Ask a colleague to request a viewing on mobile. Watch along. Every time they have to search or zoom in, you lose enquiries.

Pages per municipality and type

People search by type and municipality: "apartment for sale in Hasselt", "house to let in Genk". A dedicated page for every combination where you have listings and are active gives Google a clear answer to that search.

Do it in moderation, though. Google calls pages created only to rank for similar searches "doorway abuse". Its spam policy explicitly mentions pages aimed at specific regions or cities that lead visitors to a single page. A good municipality page shows current listings, says something about the municipality and shows that you work there.

Be realistic, too. For "house for sale" in a large municipality, portals and big chains with filter pages sit at the top. You won't take that spot easily. Your chances are better on specific combinations, sub-municipalities and your own speciality.

To find out how many pages make sense and where the limit lies, read our article on pages per municipality and type.

Your Google Business Profile and reviews

Type "estate agent" and a municipality into Google, and you often see local agencies on a map. Your Google Business Profile helps decide whether you are among them.

Google ranks local results on three things:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone is searching for.
• Distance: how far your office is from the person searching.
• Prominence: how well known your agency is.

You can't change distance. You can change relevance and prominence. Google gives its own tips for that:

1. Complete your profile and keep it accurate. According to Google, complete profiles appear more often in local search results.
2. Verify your profile. That tells Google you are allowed to represent the agency.
3. Keep your opening hours up to date, including special hours around public holidays and holidays.
4. Add photos and videos of your office, your team and your work.

You can't pay for a better position. Google states plainly that there is no way to request or buy a better local ranking.

Reviews: you may ask, you may not reward

Reviews help your profile stand out. According to Google, positive reviews and helpful replies help your business stand out.

• Ask at the right moment. After the deed, the handover of the keys or a successful let. Google provides a link and a QR code you can share.
• Ask everyone. Google's policy prohibits discouraging negative reviews or selectively asking only satisfied customers for a review.
• Give nothing in return. Money, a discount or a gift in exchange for a review is strictly forbidden, according to Google. Reviews written with a conflict of interest, such as from current or former employees, also fall under the policy.

Reply to your reviews, too. Keep it short, honest and personal. For a negative review, Google advises you to protect the customer's privacy, apologise where appropriate and respond quickly.

According to Google, a mix of positive and negative reviews often comes across as more credible. So one critical review is no disaster. A good reply says more about your agency than ten stars.

Getting found in ChatGPT and AI Overviews

The same rules apply to Google AI Overviews as to ordinary SEO. Google itself says no extra requirements or special optimisations are needed: your page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet.

Google also describes how these AI answers come about. They can run several related searches at once across subtopics and sources, and show links alongside. Google calls this "query fan-out". A clear page on a sub-question can become a source in a broader answer.

According to Google, you need no new machine-readable files, AI text files or extra markup to appear in these features. So question anyone who tries to sell you that.

The work of getting mentioned in AI answers is called GEO: generative engine optimisation. In our own test, we saw that AI assistants like to cite concrete prices, tables, step-by-step plans and official Belgian sources. To see what that means for your website, read our article on GEO for estate agents.

What the platform does and what you do

Part of your findability sits in your website's technology. Another part only you can provide.

With Habbi, Salamander's website platform, the technology is part of the subscription. Your input is what no platform can create.

Habbi works with any real estate CRM: Mason, Whise, RealSuite, Zabun, Omnicasa, Sweepbright and others, including your next one. Property descriptions come unchanged from your CRM. AI doesn't write those. AI does write the texts for your pages and blog posts, based on a context we build together during the intake.

That context matters. Google warns against large amounts of AI text without human oversight. Google asks for content from someone who demonstrably knows the subject well, with information that goes beyond the obvious. Your knowledge of the streets, the neighbourhoods and your market makes the difference. The better your intake, the better your texts.

If you have been paying for SEO for years, check what you get for it. Much of what used to be separate work now simply belongs in a good website: speed, structured data, individual property pages, a unique title per page. What remains is content, reviews and local reputation. Nobody can take that work off your hands completely.

How to measure whether it works

Measure enquiries, not just visitors. And use Google Search Console to see how Google views your site.

The performance report in Search Console shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. You see them per query, per page, per country and per device. If you appear in AI Overviews, Google says that counts towards your total search traffic under the search type "Web".

Look at three things every month:

1. Searches that include your municipality. Track impressions for "estate agent" and for "for sale" or "to let" with your municipalities added.
2. Pages that get clicks. This shows which property pages and municipality pages bring in visitors.
3. Enquiries per source. Count how many valuations, viewing requests and contact forms come from Google.

If you don't have access to Search Console or Google Analytics, ask for it from whoever manages your website. That data belongs to your agency. In Habbi, you follow your leads and your website statistics in one place, next to your properties.

Give it time, too. Findability grows, it doesn't jump. Compare months with each other, not days.