Tuesdays (ok, Wednesday this time) are 3 AI updates, one hot take, one action. Weekends are 1 practical real estate agent workflow.
Appreciate your patience as family commitments delayed this issue a day. For the last year, "being found by AI" has meant two separate jobs: getting recommended when a buyer asks AI who's good in your area, and looking good once they find you — AEO-optimized site, better content, more photography and video. It's an exhausting double whammy, and most agents have only half-solved one side. This week both sides moved.
1. Buyers use AI to start their search, not to finish it. In July, BrightLocal asked 1,227 people who'd recently searched for a local business what they actually did: only 18% were ready to contact anyone off an AI answer, and 43% of those who started in an AI tool went to Google after to check it. Greg Sterling at Near Media landed in the same place in August - AI is where buyers start, Google is where they decide. In addition Inman ran a solid checklist on August 31 - it mostly comes down to your name, phone and brokerage matching exactly everywhere they appear. This game is only gonna get more nuanced so the more you know the better. As always the consistent theme I keep seeing is consistency and making sure what you’re publishing speaks the language of AI bots - which, it turns out, is mostly the language of specifics.
2. Google put a real photo editor inside Docs and Slides. On September 1 Google shipped Pics, an AI image tool built straight into Workspace: select an image in a Doc or Slide and one click opens the full editor — hover over a single element to change just that part, rewrite or translate text sitting on the image, recrop the same shot for social versus print, upscale to 2K or 4K, with version history so a change you don't like can be redone. It isn't free, and it isn't on the cheapest paid tier either. Open a Doc, click an image, and you'll know in about five seconds whether you have it. One caution: if you're editing an actual listing photo rather than a graphic, several states now require disclosure and keeping the original on file - check your MLS and state rules.
Docs to video is the card you want.
3. A day later, Google Vids started turning a plain document into a narrated video on its own. On September 2 Google added the same trick to video: upload a Google Doc, PDF, or Word file — a listing description, a CMA, anything — and Vids writes the script, records the narration in one of a handful of stock voices, and builds visuals around it. No filming, no editing timeline. Vids reaches more plans than Pics does, including the cheaper ones, so open it even if Pics wasn't there for you. What it can't do is know anything that wasn't already in the document you fed it. The same disclosure rule applies the moment a visual claims to show the actual property.
HOT TAKE
These upgrades make the average listing look better but none of them show the work you did. When it becomes easier and easier to use the tools the key will be what stories you’re gonna tell. Even when AI is searching for the top agents it’s looking for something REAL to recommend. The agents who win in Q4 will be the ones who tell the stories of the real things they did. Use the tools to tell stories of real community activation, real renovations, real meaningful things to buyers and sellers.
1 THING TO TRY
Open Google Vids this week or just type vids.new in your browser. If you pay Google for anything, personally or through your brokerage, you probably already have it. Pick Landscape or Portrait at the top, click the card called Docs to video, and feed it one listing description you already wrote or your last CMA exported as a PDF. Ask for 30 seconds, plain and factual, no music that sounds like a car commercial. It's usually decent with numbers and simple facts, and almost always wrong about the neighborhood itself. Then run it a second time on a paragraph about something you actually did on that deal - the renovation you talked them into, the thing you caught in the inspection - and notice which of the two you'd put your name on.
BOSTON LIVE & IN PERSON
After a packed house in Cali I’m bringing the Claude 1-day workshop to Boston for an exclusive session. Here’s what one agent who attended had to say:
"I'm an in-person learner, so I was really excited to see Matt was going to be at the SoCal Summit. I learned so much, and there's so much I want to implement in my business. I feel really set up to create a workflow when I get back home. Content creation, market reports, neighborhood guides, being able to convert all of that into social media and evergreen content, and then schedule it so it’s a workflow that happens every Monday morning.
It's just $499, and the code EARLY10 takes 10% off if you book by this Saturday, September 12. Grab your seat here.
-Matt
