REA Says Audit Your AI Visibility. Here's What a Prompt Can't Tell You.
realestate.com.au is now telling agents to check what ChatGPT says about them. Good. Here's what its free audit covers, where a DIY prompt runs out, and what to do next.
Australia's biggest property portal just told its agents to go and ask ChatGPT about themselves. realestate.com.au has published a free findability audit and a guide to moving from SEO to AEO, both built around the same idea: sellers now ask an AI who to list with, and you may not know what it says.
We've been saying this for a while. It helps to have REA say it too. Here's what they recommend, what's genuinely useful, and where a do-it-yourself prompt runs out.
What REA actually tells agents to do
- A four-minute mystery shop. Log out, open a few AI tools, and ask two questions: who is the best agent in my suburb, and what can you tell me about me?
- A full findability audit. A long prompt you paste into an AI tool with web search on. It checks six things: the cold test, what can be found about you, consistency, evidence, review quality and hallucinations. It ends with a plan for this week, 30 days and 90 days.
- Four checks the AI can't do for you. Is your own Google Business Profile claimed? Is your website blocking AI crawlers? Do your details match across every platform? Are your reviews specific enough to quote?
They also cite REA's own Property Seeker research: the average buyer's search has stretched from 23 weeks in 2022 to 40 weeks in 2025. More weeks of research means more chances for a buyer or seller to ask an AI who they should trust.
What they got right
Plenty. The advice to compare more than one AI tool is sound, because they disagree. Consistency is the right focus: if your name, agency, phone number and suburbs differ from one profile to the next, an AI has no safe answer to give. And the review advice is spot on. "Great agent, five stars" gives an AI nothing to use. A review that names the suburb and the problem you solved does.
If the chatbot sees conflicting information, it moves on to the next agent. "They'll serve up your competitor."
That's Kim Seeling Smith in the accompanying podcast, and it's the cleanest way to put the stakes. You don't lose to AI. You lose to the agent AI is comfortable naming.
Where a DIY prompt runs out
A free prompt is a good first step. Three limits are worth knowing before you call it done.
- It's one answer at a time. REA's own audit says the tools "disagree with each other far more than you would expect, so one result is not your answer". That means running it in several tools, then reading and reconciling the output by hand.
- It tells you whether you appear, not who beats you. Seeing a rival's name in an answer is useful. Knowing how often it shows up, in which questions, and why, is what tells you what to fix first.
- It finds gaps. It doesn't close them. REA's own guide says some clean-up may need a specialist. The audit ends with a plan. Someone still has to write the profiles, fix the listings, collect the reviews and re-check in 90 days.
What we'd do this week
- Run the four-minute mystery shop in at least three AI tools. Screenshot everything.
- Claim your own Google Business Profile, not just the agency's.
- Open your website, REA profile, Domain, RateMyAgent, LinkedIn and Facebook side by side. Fix every mismatch.
- Ask your next ten happy clients one question: which suburb, and what was the hardest part we sorted out?
Then what?
If you'd rather not run it by hand, our free AI visibility audit does the check for you and shows you where you stand. If you want to fix the gaps yourself, The Visible Agent Blueprint is the step-by-step system. And if you'd rather hand the whole job over, book a call with Sandy.
REA has made the first move easy. The listings go to the agent AI can actually name.