Real Estate Industry: 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks

*This data comes from the 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report. To explore insights across all 10 industries, access the full report here.

Executive summary

There’s a new search experience for brands to prioritize: AI answer engines.

The rise of AI answer engines and Google’s integration of AI Overview (AIO) results directly onto traditional SERPs means users are increasingly getting answers from AI-generated summaries directly rather than clicking a link, leading to a surge in zero-click searches.

While organic search still fuels the majority of discovery, AI has introduced what we’re calling a parallel surface of visibility—an invisible layer that determines which brands are seen before anyone clicks.

The data shows that AI referral traffic currently represents just over 1% of total web visits and is growing by roughly 1% each month, on average. It will never rival traditional organic search traffic—but that’s not the point. In this new model, visibility no longer begins on your website; it starts within the AI experiences that answer questions, guide intent, and shape perception in real time. If your brand isn’t cited, mentioned, or referenced in these AI answers, it’s effectively absent from the modern customer journey.

AI visibility is becoming its own performance channel, one that signals which brands are trusted enough to enter the answer. Winning in this space isn’t about clicks; it’s about credibility.

The following findings provide the first layer of industry-specific benchmark data essential for navigating the new search landscape and ensuring credibility (and visibility) of your brand. It moves beyond traditional website analytics to provide key context for evaluating your total search performance, identifying accurate KPIs for both organic and AIO, and implementing the right strategies to drive results.

Top takeaways for Real Estate

• AEO, GEO & AI Search benchmarks:
  • Real Estate sees 1.01% of its total traffic from AI referrals, heavily driven by the management & development subindustry (1.09%).
  • While AI referral traffic grew marginally from May to July (at a 0.35% rate), the growth rate decelerated slightly in August (-0.06%).
  • ChatGPT is the primary source of AI referrals for this industry, accounting for 95.2% of clicks.
  • Market share in answer engines is highly specialized, with publicstorage.com (31.46%) dominating AI citations in the equity REITs subindustry and hines.com (17.43%) leading in the real estate management & development subindustry.
• AIO benchmarks:
  • AI Overviews appear on only 4.5% of page-one Google queries for Real Estate, well below average.
  • Blog content is the most cited page type in Real Estate AIOs, appearing nearly twice as often as news pages.
  • zillow.com won the most AIO results in the management & development space with .06%. extraspace.com won the most AIO results in the equity REITs subindustry with .04%.

Methodology

Using Conductor, we analyzed 13,770 domains from leading brands. Each domain was categorized into 10 industries and then further segmented into 22 subindustries to provide additional insights, which map directly to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) framework. This research identifies emerging traffic trends, separating traditional organic traffic from new AI referral patterns and zero-click visibility at a granular level.

For the purposes of this industry-specific report, the Real Estate industry was split into two subindustries: equity real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate management & development.

AI search methodology

The AI search market share and brand leaders are sourced from our analysis of 13,770 domains being cited against our index of 3.5 million unique prompts between May and September 2025. We focused on these domains as they aligned with the 10 GICS industry categories we are reporting on. The analysis included 17 million AI-generated responses and over 100 million citations sourced from our AI Search Performance (AISP) and AIO reporting index.

The findings on AI search traffic, organic Google traffic, and referral traffic by answer engine type were sourced by analyzing anonymized and aggregated traffic patterns across 1,215 of our enterprise customer domains to assess how users of answer engines are reaching websites.

Ultimately, we analyzed more than 3.3 billion sessions across all of our data sources. Of that traffic, AI traffic from LLMs and chatbots accounted for more than 35.7 million sessions across the 10 industries analyzed.

The following benchmarks are averages sourced from an analysis of monthly AI search traffic data in the U.S. over a five-month period (May 2025-September 2025) in Conductor.

AI Overview methodology

We analyzed AI Overview data in the U.S. over a four-week period from September 15 to October 12, 2025, to gain insight into how AI-powered search is affecting Google’s traditional search experience. To do so, we analyzed approximately 21.9 million unique Google searches from Conductor’s traditional search index. Of those Google searches, nearly 5.5 million generated an AIO result.

AEO & AI search visibility analysis for Real Estate

This analysis provides a granular, data-driven benchmark for true visibility in the AI search landscape.

This section focuses on:

• AI referral traffic by subindustry
• Month-over-month (MoM) growth
• AI referral traffic by answer engine
• AI vs. Traditional channels
• AI market share

AI referral traffic for the Real Estate industry

The results:

• AI referral traffic accounts for 1.01% of all website traffic for the Real Estate industry.
  • AI referral traffic usually has high intent and is more likely to convert than traffic from traditional channels. That shift means that AI search visibility is becoming the new key currency for enterprise AEO.
• The Real Estate (1.01%) industry receives roughly average AI referral traffic out of the 10 analyzed industries.

AI referral traffic by Real Estate subindustries

The results:

• 1.09% of traffic from queries related to real estate management & development comes from AI.
• While not nearly as much as the management & development subindustry, the equity real estate investment trusts subindustry still saw .41% of traffic come from AI.

This disparity is likely due to the fact that management & development queries often lead to browsing and require clicks to see specifics, while REIT queries often seek specific data points that AI can summarize directly.

Month-over-month growth in AI referral traffic change

The results:

• AI referral traffic in the Real Estate industry rose .29% from May to September 2025.
• The rate of month-over-month growth increased marginally from May to August 2025.
  • The rate declined from August to September 2025 by .06%.

AI referral traffic vs. Traditional SEO traffic benchmarks for Real Estate

The results:

• Established channels like organic search, paid, direct, social, and any other referral traffic aside from AI still drive the vast majority of website visits across all industries.
  • AI traffic made up just 1.01% of all traffic in the Real Estate industry.
• Google makes up 11%, and other traffic sources contribute nearly 88%.

The data illustrates the continued importance of a strong traditional SEO strategy. Even as AI search emerges, optimizing for visibility in standard Google results is essential for improving brand visibility and relevance. This potential overlap reinforces the need for a dual approach of traditional SEO and AEO / GEO strategies.

AI referral traffic by answer engine source: Real Estate industry

The results

• On average, ChatGPT drives 95.2% of all AI referral traffic in the Real Estate industry.
  • If you're not being cited on ChatGPT, you're losing out on the lion's share of high-intent AI referral traffic.
• Perplexity drove about 2% of AI traffic to the Real Estate industry.

That said, while ChatGPT is the engine you should prioritize, it’s not the only answer engine you should pay attention to. All of the remaining answer engines are driving notable traffic and are likely to continue expanding their influence. Prepare for future volatility by tracking your brand presence across all of these answer engines and then optimizing as needed if your mentions and citations drop.

Real Estate market share: Domain citations and brand mention leaders

This section is our analysis of the brands and domains that won the most market share in the Real Estate space. Our analysis was based on AI citations and brand mentions for May through September 2025. The results are split across two key Real Estate subindustries:

• Equity real estate investment trusts (REITs)
• Real estate management & development

Real Estate industry: Top 5 domains by AI citation market share

1. hines.com
2. publicstorage.com
3. cbre.com
4. extraspace.com
5. colliers.com

The dominance of hines.com (11.62%), cbre.com (7.37%), and colliers.com (5.15%) highlights the high value AI models place on commercial real estate (CRE) and investment content. Answer engines frequently cite these global authorities for the data-rich research and market analysis needed to answer complex financial and B2B queries.

We also see a heavy reliance on a specific consumer niche: self-storage. The strong showing of publicstorage.com (10.49%) and extraspace.com (7.28%) indicates a high volume of high-intent queries, with AI models pulling pricing, location, and unit data directly from these brand leaders.

Real Estate industry: Top 5 brand leaders by AI brand mention market share

1. Hines
2. Public Storage
3. CBRE
4. Zillow
5. Colliers

The top brand mentions largely reinforce the authority of the most-cited commercial and self-storage domains. The key insight here is Zillow's appearance as a top 5 brand. While its domain (zillow.com) was just outside the top 5 for citations, its brand is mentioned constantly (7.36%), indicating that AI models recognize Zillow as the go-to authority for residential real estate and home value queries.

Equity REITs market share leaders by domain citations

Below, we have the top five domains in the equity REITs subindustry based on their share of domain citations in AI search.

This subindustry list accounts for the major self-storage players from the overall industry chart, with publicstorage.com (31.46%) and extraspace.com (21.83%) holding the top spots. It diverges by filtering out the commercial/B2B leaders like hines.com and introducing new, highly relevant domains: cubesmart.com (6.13%), reit.com (6.06%), and sparefoot.com (5.68%). This confirms that AI queries about equity REITs are overwhelmingly focused on the self-storage niche, with AI citing these brand leaders and key industry portals as the main authorities.

Real estate management & development market share leaders by domain citations

This subindustry list is nearly identical to the commercial/B2B half of the overall industry leaders, with hines.com (17.43%), cbre.com (11.05%), and colliers.com (7.72%) holding top spots in both. It diverges by filtering out all of the self-storage REITs and introducing major residential management domains weidner.com (6.38%) and zillow.com (6.28%). This signals that AI models view real estate management & development as a mix of B2B commercial firms and large-scale residential platforms, citing both as authorities.

AI Overview benchmarks for Real Estate

Despite the rise of AI answer engines, billions of searches still happen on Google, and every day, AI Overviews are appearing for more of those searches. That means it’s essential for brands to optimize their site to rank on page 1 in Google and increase their chances of winning an AIO result.

Below is our analysis of the AIO visibility in the Real Estate industry.

AIO visibility analysis: Real Estate industry

The results:

• AIO results appeared for 4.5% of all Google queries in the Real Estate industry.
• The Real Estate space saw the lowest AI Overview visibility across all 10 industries.

AIO visibility analysis: Real Estate subindustries

The results:

• 4.5% of all Real Estate queries trigger an AI Overview in Google.
  • If you’re in the Real Estate industry, you need to find a way to win AIO results or risk disappearing from nearly 5% of queries.
• Equity REITs (5.6%) searches trigger an AIO result most often of the two analyzed Real Estate subindustries.
• Real estate management & development (4.2%) had a slightly lower share of AI Overviews among Real Estate subindustries.

While Real Estate has complex, informational queries perfect for AIOs, the high number of navigational, troubleshooting, visual, and direct commercial queries likely brings down the overall percentage compared to other industries.

Overall, the Real Estate industry has fewer AIOs because many searches are navigational, local, or visual. Equity REITs see more AIOs because the dominant search intent in that niche (financial research and complex definitions) aligns perfectly with the core function of AI Overviews.

Page types cited most often in AIO results for Real Estate

The results:

• Blog content was by far the most cited page source in AI Overviews, with over 15,000 pages being cited in the result.
• The next closest page type in AIO results was a news page with just over 8,000 citations.

The key takeaway here is that your content is much more likely to appear in AIO results for Real Estate queries if it’s blog content. Real Estate queries are often process-heavy and informational; blogs provide the detailed, experience-based, structured content that AI Overviews need to generate comprehensive answers, making them more frequently cited than news articles focused on current events.

Real Estate AIO share of voice winners by subindustry

The following tables show the top 5 domains that were cited most often in an AI overview across the equity real estate investment trusts (REITs) and real estate management & development subindustries.

The results:

• ExtraSpaceStorage (.04%) leads the AIO share of voice for the Equity REITs subindustry.
• Digital Realty (.01%) and DataBank (.01%) follow in a tie for second.

The extremely low and fragmented market shares indicate that AIOs are citing a very wide variety of sources for these specialized financial queries. The list is split between consumer-facing self-storage (led by ExtraSpaceStorage) and highly technical B2B REITs (Digital Realty, DataBank). This shows AIOs are sourcing answers from different, niche authorities: the main brand for consumer storage queries and the primary B2B domains for complex, financial questions about data centers and logistics.

The results:

• Zillow (.06%) accounts for the largest AIO share of voice, double its nearest competitor.
• Realtor.com (.03%) and Redfin (.02%) take the next two spots.

This subindustry's AIO leaders are exclusively residential real estate portals, which is a stark contrast to the B2B-led domain citation chart (which featured Hines and CBRE). This signals that AIOs for real estate management & development are overwhelmingly answering consumer queries about home listings, values, and agents. AIOs are clearly trained to prioritize these massive data aggregators (Zillow, Realtor.com) as the primary authorities for residential market data.

Summary

The future of digital discovery belongs to the Real Estate brands that understand that AI visibility isn’t a nice-to-have metric—it’s the next frontier of search performance. Having informed, data-driven KPIs for both SEO and AEO / GEO enables digital teams to measure their total search visibility and adapt their strategies from clicks to zero-click citations.

Leverage the Real Estate industry benchmarks featured here to understand how your brand performs and where there are opportunities to improve.

Remember, the shift to AI is accelerating. While AI referral traffic is a small (but high-intent) channel today, now is the time to secure your market share in these new, answer-driven results to ensure you show up first—and keep showing up first.