AI Search Visibility for Multifamily Marketers
TL/DR: Whether we like it or not, the renter journey now starts with AI, not ILSs or ads. To stay visible, multifamily marketers must optimize for tools like ChatGPT and SGE by publishing entity-rich content, using structured data, and diversifying content and distribution beyond their own sites.
Note: This article is LONG. It’s a comprehensive overview of the current state of AI visibility for multifamily, but is also designed to be a reference point for you to search through if you’re looking to understand/focus on a particular aspect.
The New Rules of Visibility in AI Search for Multifamily
The search landscape is undergoing a seismic, foundational shift: generative AI is becoming the front door to discovery. With this, the rules of visibility are changing, and no industry has more question marks around the impact and future than multifamily.
Traditional SEO is no longer the only organic game in town, paid search is being redefined by AI-powered results, the future of ILSs is a big unknown, and changes are happening so fast that it’s overwhelming and hard to keep track. For multifamily marketers, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.
In this post, we’ll explore what this new landscape means for property marketing teams regarding ILS spend, content strategy, and digital presence, and how to take proactive steps to build and maintain visibility in the age of AI.
Key Definitions
You can find a more comprehensive list of new-ish terms and definitions here, but for now, let’s focus on a few terms you’re likely hearing more often in conversations about AI and search:
AI Overview (AIO)
Google’s AI-generated summary that appears at the top of search results. Often includes brand mentions, features, or snippets—without clicks.
Zero-Click Search
A search that ends without a website visit (because the user gets their answer directly in the search results).
Entity
A named “thing” AI systems can identify and remember (like your building’s name or brand). Visibility depends on how well AI understands your entity.
Structured Data / Schema
Code that helps search engines and AI tools understand what your content is about (e.g. floorplans, reviews, amenities).
LLM (Large Language Model)
The AI behind tools like ChatGPT, Claude, etc. that are trained to understand language and generate answers.
How the Renter Journey Has Changed
Search is Becoming AI by Default
First things first: a huge shift is the Google search experience. Even if renters aren’t actively going to chat-based AI searches like ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc., and they continue to go to Google (not even switching to AI mode or Gemini), by default, they’re engaging with AI. This change in itself necessitates marketing strategy and tactical changes.
We’ve known for some time that the renter search journey isn’t linear, and with the changes AI has brought and continues to bring to the search experience, the digital journey is becoming even more nebulous and hard to define. As AI reshapes daily life, renters have also jumped right in, and renter search behavior is adapting. They’re doing research earlier and differently, and using chat-based interfaces to guide their journey.
Top-of-Funnel
More than just showing results as responses to a query, AI tools synthesize data and they remember, which impacts property exposure both up and down the funnel. Consider how renters in the discovery (top of funnel) phase are using ChatGPT:
“What are the best apartments in Houston for med students?” or “Best places to live in Oakland by BART” might result in a list of properties pulled from sources across the web. Your building’s presence (or absence) in that answer could determine whether you're even considered.
Bottom-of-Funnel
Renters are also using chat-based AI tools for targeted research on properties. As people become more comfortable with AI as an assistant in their daily lives, they also rely on it to do the work for them, compiling information from sources to get their questions answered.
Example queries:
“What do people say about living in ABC Towers?”
“What are the move-in fees at XYZ Gardens?”
Why Traditional Channels Are Losing First Touch
Historically, ILS platforms, PPC ads, and Google search results captured the first interaction with a prospect. In 2022, 72% of apartment searches started on Google. Renters would start there, meander through ads, get driven to ILSs, check out Google reviews, click on property websites, etc.
But zero-click search is changing how renters engage, and with AI Overviews (SGE), and tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, fewer users are clicking through to websites. In fact, 58.5% of searches end in zero clicks.
This means your property might be mentioned without getting a visit, which makes attribution even more of a black hole (more on this below). Even without being able to track clicks, it’s critical to pay attention to how you can best position yourself to be described as you want through the surrounds your brand, which matters just as much as where you “rank”, if not more.
Traditional vs. AI-Era Discovery
Marketing Tactics: Before AI → In the AI Era
SEO → Rank in blue links → Be included in AI summaries
PPC → Bid on keywords → Must complement zero-click discovery
ILS → Primary discovery source → Secondary; often post-discovery validation
Tracking → Click-based attribution → Brand recall + branded search volume
Content → Focus on conversion → Focus on discoverability, clarity, and recall
Where Renters Are Discovering Brands Today
With AI tools reshaping how renters search, brands need to show up across every touchpoint: online, offline, and everywhere in between.
We want to keep the focus on the implications of AI search visibility for multifamily here, but we’d be remiss not to acknowledge the critical role social media is playing in discovery (that’s for another deep dive).
Examples of where renters are now discovering properties (including but not limited to):
AI Overviews (Google SGE) that summarize buildings and apartment features
Chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude that remember and reuse branded context
Localized AI tools like Perplexity that pull from public data and blog content
Smart voice assistants and mobile search using natural language
There are two critical factors AI continues to reshape:
Visibility – Does your property appear in AI-powered results?
Accuracy – Is your property described correctly?
If either is lacking, you’re likely invisible to renters before they ever reach your website.
What AI Visibility Means in Multifamily Marketing
AI visibility means being known to large language models and AI engines. It’s about building a data-rich, high-context digital footprint that AIs can recognize, recall, and reuse.
Questions renters are asking AI:
“What are good pet-friendly apartments in downtown Austin?”
“Which buildings in Chicago have co-working spaces?”
“Best luxury apartments near the medical center with 24-hour gyms?”
You don’t opt in to these conversations. The models respond based on what they’ve learned—and what they can currently access.
What Does This Mean for Tracking and Measuring?
Tracking is obviously critical and deserves many of its own posts, as understanding the ROI of marketing efforts is a massively directional tool in the marketing toolbox. However, in the AI search era, traditional web and performance metrics like source attribution, click-through rate, and last-touch conversion are losing value and increasingly unreliable as performance indicators.
Here’s why:
A renter might first learn about your building in an AI Overview or ChatGPT response.
They don’t click—they just remember your name.
Later, they Google your property directly or visit your site via branded search.
Your analytics tools credit that as “direct traffic” or “branded search”, not the AI that actually did the work.
This disconnect means your attribution needs to be rethought, and you may be underestimating the value of upstream visibility strategies like structured content, neighborhood blogs, schema markup or even in-person marketing efforts like flyers or billboards.
What to Watch Instead
Branded search volume and is it going up month over month?
An increase in branded search volume means you’re gaining top-of-funnel visibility be it through AI tools, press, partnerships, etc. It also means your name is being remembered and recalled, even if users aren’t clicking when they first see you. Ultimately, it means an omnipresent approach is working.
Mentions in AI tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, SGE, etc.)
When your property is referenced in AI-generated responses, it means you’ve reached a level of contextual relevance because these tools are seeing your brand as a credible part of the answer. Whether or not the user clicks, your name is being introduced during discovery moments that increasingly shape renter decisions.
Presence in AI Overviews
If your property consistently shows up in Google’s AI Overviews, that’s a signal that your content is trusted, current, and clearly understood by Google’s systems. It also means your structured data, reviews, and on-page copy are working together to train the model (visibility here often replaces traditional rankings). Remember that this and mentions in AI tools are not a one-and-done. These systems place a lot of value on updated content, so it’s important to monitor consistently (which is a very tall order and something we can help with at CaraCara).
Visibility across third-party platforms (not just your website)
AI tools and users are drawing from a wide surface area: Reddit, Quora, Medium, Google Maps, reviews, blogs, etc.. The more consistently and clearly your brand shows up across these channels, the more likely you are to be included in AI-generated answers. It’s a strong signal that your digital presence is wide enough to support discoverability in a zero-click world.
Now is the time for marketers to broaden the way success is measured. In an AI-driven search landscape, focusing solely on clicks or last-touch conversions paints an incomplete AND inaccurate picture. Renters today are influenced long before they ever land on your website so instead of asking, “Where did they click?” we should be asking, “Did they notice us? Did they remember our name? Are we showing up consistently wherever they’re looking?”.
Visibility, presence, and brand recall are becoming just as important as traffic because they shape the renter’s journey from the very beginning. In this new era, your brand’s ability to show up, be understood, and stick in someone’s mind is what ultimately drives action, even if it’s not immediately measurable in a dashboard.
Real-World Examples
Google SGE
We’ve seen properties get summarized as “luxury apartments with poor reviews” or “student-focused communities with flexible leases” (showing it is lifting language directly from review sites, amenity pages, or blogs).
ChatGPT
Ask ChatGPT for the best apartments in a neighborhood, and it pulls from neighborhood descriptions, Google reviews, structured mentions, and more. If your site says nothing beyond “luxury living,” you won’t be mentioned as it’s consistently looking for context. What makes this building luxurious? It’s looking for supporting factors.
Perplexity & Claude
Both pull from forums, Reddit, Quora, and blog content. If your building has no long-form content attached to it, you’re unlikely to surface.
Auditing Your Current Visibility
Back to the two umbrella issues we’re looking at: Visibility and Accuracy. The first step to improving visibility is to understand where you sit (Note: this is a moving target—it will change). This is where we can help!
At a high level, here’s what you can look for:
What does ChatGPT or Perplexity say about your property?
Do you appear in Google’s AI Overviews with accurate information?
Are you showing up on forums, Reddit, Quora, or secondary blogs?
Is your content entity-rich and structured clearly across platforms?
Strategic Content & Distribution Considerations
We dig into this in The 4 Foundations of AI Brand Visibility, where we discuss our STEP framework, but in short:
S – Structured, Machine-Readable Content
Format your content for both humans and machines. Use schema markup, FAQs, lists, and clear headings so AI tools can interpret and reuse your material. Be clear and avoid jargon. Describe what you actually do and the value you offer! For a property, things like location/proximity, unique amenities, etc.
T – Trusted, Public Sources
Expand beyond your website and get mentions in news, directories, partner sites, and authoritative third-party sources—these validate your credibility to AI.
E – Entity Clarity & Consistency
Keep your brand identity uniform. Use the same name, descriptions, and associations across bios, listings, and structured data so AI systems clearly understand who you are.
P – Persistent Content That Builds Familiarity
Remember that AI remembers patterns. Publish recurring, helpful content (glossaries, explainers, guides) around your core topics so your brand stays top-of-mind for machines and humans alike.
Paid Search Is Changing, Too
As AI Overviews eat up search real estate, PPC strategies need to evolve. Here's how:
Ad space is shrinking: With AI-generated answers at the top, fewer people are seeing or clicking ads. Google is making changes and right now, there is a lot of speculation, but the one thing we confidently do is expect the unexpected!
Intent matters more: Ads targeting long-tail, conversational queries are gaining traction (eg. “best dog-friendly apartments with trails nearby”)
AI-informed targeting: Google’s ad platform is increasingly AI-first, and is optimizing based on behavior and past searches, not just keywords.
Demand for creative assets: Google now surfaces images and branded content alongside text. Having high-quality visuals and descriptive copy (captions, metadata, and even file names!) is critical.
ILS ROI scrutiny: As more discovery shifts to AI, paying for premium ILS visibility may offer diminishing returns unless backed by broader brand awareness.
Action Step: Rethink how your paid strategy complements organic AI visibility. Invest in creative, contextual content that reinforces brand mentions across multiple discovery surfaces.
Final Thought
We’re entering a world where visibility is no longer just about rankings but about recall and recognition across AI systems, and multifamily marketers are poised to get ahead when thinking like data providers. If the AI can’t explain what makes your building special, neither can your next renter.
FAQs
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You can track branded search volume using tools like Google Search Console, Google Trends, or SEO platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs. Increases in searches that include your property name or brand signal increasing awareness even if users aren’t clicking through from AI tools directly. It's a strong indicator that your visibility efforts are working upstream.
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1. Manually Check
You can run spot checks by prompting tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity , etc. with renter-like queries and long-tail keywords you’d want to rank for. Look for whether your brand is mentioned OR cited, and also check Google’s AI Overviews. This is helpful directionally, but it’s limited because you’d need to monitor hundreds of prompts consistently to get a full picture.
2. Work with a Monitoring Partner (like CaraCara)
Instead of guessing, partners like CaraCara automate this process with your brand’s specific needs in mind. We track your brand’s inclusion in AI answers across platforms and over time, surfacing where you show up, what queries you appear in, and how you compare to competitors. This gives you consistent, benchmarked visibility data instead of one-off snapshots.
3. Add AI as an Attribution Source
Update your analytics and reporting frameworks to account for AI as a channel the same way you separate organic, paid or referral traffic. While direct traffic attribution from AI tools isn’t widely supported yet (some tools offer a UTM/referral path or parameter, but it’s inconsistent), you can build proxies by monitoring branded search lift, referral patterns, and mentions. Over time, this helps connect AI visibility to real outcomes like traffic, leads, or leases.
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If your property isn’t being mentioned, there’s probably a few things that can be going on. It may be because data is missing or inconsistent across public sources. AI tools rely on structured content, third-party mentions, and entity clarity (not just your website) for visibility. For example, is the name of your building consistent across all sites? Even something like having “Clementine Commons” on one site and “Clementine Commons Boston” on another can impact your visibility.
Reach out and we can help understand where you are and what can be improved!
