Why AI Is Recommending Some Builders and Ignoring Others: AEO Explained-188

Two episodes ago, a Florida builder went from a 16% ChatGPT citation rate to 72% in a matter of months. This episode answers the question everyone kept asking: how? In this solo follow-up, Anya Chrisanthon - CCO at Anewgo - breaks down Answer Engine Optimization in plain language, no jargon, no tech degree required.

SEO vs. AEO SEO gets you found in a list. AEO gets you recommended as the answer. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini for a builder like you, AI doesn't return ten options - it picks one or two. If your digital presence doesn't give AI enough specific, consistent, verifiable information to recommend you with confidence, it moves on to a builder whose story it can actually tell.

Why most builder websites are invisible to AI right now Vague taglines, generic community descriptions, inconsistent naming across platforms, and missing pricing all create uncertainty for AI. Uncertain AI doesn't recommend you. And with ChatGPT now rolling out ads in the US, the landscape is shifting even faster.

What AEO-ready actually looks like Specific community names, locations, and price points. Real buyer descriptions that go beyond demographics. Differentiators that are stated, not implied. Consistency across your website, Google Business profile, social presence, and any third-party coverage. Earned media - reviews, press, industry recognition - because AI gains confidence when your claims are reinforced by sources outside your own website.

Three things to do this week (1) Search for yourself the way your ideal buyer would - in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude. (2) Read your own website like a stranger - could AI accurately describe who you are and who you build for? (3) Get an AEO assessment from Anewgo - email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com, subject line "AEO Assessment."

📖 Get the case study (free - enter your name and email): https://nut.sh/ell/forms/328341/bzkECM 🎙 Listen to the case study episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768?i=1000766308908 📝 Latest from the Anewgo blog: anewgo.com/blog

About Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

Transcript

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Hello and welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Anewgo of New Home Sales podcast. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and today we're going to have a follow-up episode on AEO. In other words, answer engine optimization. Now, if you listened to our episode a couple of weeks ago, you heard a number that I think genuinely stopped some of you in your tracks. It certainly did me. A builder we work with went from being cited by ChatGPT 16% of the time to 72% in a matter of months. Now, keep in mind, the same builder, same market, same competitors, nothing else changed except they worked with Anewgo for several months on AEO specifically. And the question I kept getting after we shared the story was, "Okay, but how? What actually changed? What does this look like in practice for a home builder like me?" That is what today's episode is all about. We're going to talk about AEO, again, answer engine optimization. You wanna call it AIO, whatever you wanna call it, in plain language. No technical jargon, no acronyms. You don't need a computer science degree to understand, just a clear explanation of what it is, why it matters right now specifically, and what you should actually be thinking about for your business. So if you haven't listened to, that case study that I'm referring to yet, I'd go back and start there first, not because you'll be lost without it, but because the case study, context makes everything we're talking about today a lot more tangible, and I will link it right here in the show notes so you can easily find it. All right, let's get into it. I want to start with a question. When was the last time you actually googled something important? Not a quick search for a restaurant or directions. I mean something you really needed to research, like a big purchase, a business decision, or a topic that you genuinely need to understand. Because I have noticed in myself, and I hear this from a lot of people- That for those kinds of questions, I'm increasingly not going to Google first. I'm opening ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity and just asking, having a conversation, getting a synthesized answer that pulls from everything that AI knows about that topic. For me personally, I just purchased a car. I needed a new car. My car was so old. And in the past, I feel like car buying was a real nightmare for me. I really, you know, was at the mercy of a dealer really when I go into the dealership and try to figure out what kind of car I want, even if I did some research online prior. It was just a lot of information, and other than referencing Kelley Blue Book value, that is again not available to you immediately, it was a really stressful experience for me in the past, and I felt like I've always gotten taken advantage of, and I'm sure a lot of our female listeners feel the same exact way. Well, this time around, I explained to Claude what my driving habits were, what I was looking for, and he recommended a s- several specific model and makes of cars that would work for my situation. And then I was able to use Claude to compare available models side by side and figure out what is actually a good deal because, you know, on paper, one would look like a, looks like a great buy for me, but then Claude would analyze it and say, "You know what? This is actually way overpriced," or, you know, "It's not a great model because of this or that." So I feel like the pressure was definitely a lot less for me this time around. It was, was much more enjoyable. I felt like I went into the process much more informed. I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew I was getting a good value, so I felt much more confident in my own decision to buy this car. So, and buyers are doing the exact same thing with new home sales. Not all of them yet, not yet, but the number is growing, and it's growing fast, and it skews towards the exactly kind of buyer you want. You know, who are the people using answer engines? They're educated. They're intentional. They're doing real research before they make a move. So another report that came out recently found that 75% of home buyers now expect AI to be used during the buying process. Now, not would like, they expect. 75% of home buyers said that, and a growing portion of those buyers are starting their builder search by asking AI directly, not browsing a listing site, not googling, asking. And that's another thing that's happening, is not only a lot of builder websites are getting bypassed if you're not showing up in this, but even syndication sites may be getting bypassed, right? Because people are getting, answers directly, and it tells them one or two builders that are a good match for them, so there's really no need to even go to Google or, to Zillow or, you know, other syndication sites. Now, I do think that, Zillow's gonna be safe from this for a while, just because Zillow is, like, such a beast on its own, and people go to Zillow just for fun oftentimes, not necessarily to buy or sell their place. It's almost like a habit, right? You go to Zillow to research things. But, I bet they're also starting to see that their traffic numbers are dropping just from buyers going directly to, ChatGPT. And, you know, when they're going to ChatGPT, people are a- having full-on conversations. They're asking things like, "Who are the best new home builders in the market? What's the difference between production builder or semi-custom builder? Which builder gives you the most value for your money? What's the best, boutique, home builder in Raleigh for families with young kids?" That last one is actually a real search, and when it was asked, Garman Homes, one of Anewgo's clients here in Raleigh, came up as the number one recommendation across multiple AI systems. Not because they paid for it, not because they ran an ad, but because their digital presence was built in a way that AI could understand, trust, and recommend with confidence. Now, speaking of ads, ChatGPT just rolled out ads, and ads are now available in the US for business owners, to advertise on ChatGPT. Now, the way the answer shows up is it's not showing up in your answer. So in other words, if you paid to show up as a home builder, it's not gonna recommend you as a home builder unless you're actually a good match. But it, it'll be almost like a banner ad at the bottom. We're gonna keep an eye on that and how that whole thing evolves, 'cause again, it's brand new. But that may be something that you'll start noticing is, you may start seeing some ads, if you have a free account. That's definitely a whole new, ball game here, and most builders are not playing it yet. So let me introduce the term properly, because I think it's important, to be precise here. AEO stands for answer engine optimization. And if you, know what SEO is, which is search engine optimization, AEO is the next evolution of that idea, but they're not the same thing. And understanding the difference is really the whole ball game right now. SEO is about getting found. When a buyer types something into Google, SEO determines whether your website shows up in the results and how high. It is about ranking in a list. Position one, position five, position page number 10, right? The buyer still has to click, read, evaluate, and decide. Now, AEO is about being the answer. When a buyer asks AI a question, AI does not return a list of 10 options and let the buyer sort through them. Instead, it synthesizes everything it knows, and it delivers a response. One answer, maybe two, stated with confidence of a trusted advisor. That is a fundamentally different experience for the buyer, and it requires a fundamentally different approach from you as a builder. So here's the way I think about it: SEO got you found in a list. AEO gets you recommended as the answer. Those are not the same thing And the builders who figure that out now are going to have a significant advantage over the ones who are still optimizing for a world where Google is the only game in town. Okay, so this is the part where I want to be really clear and practical because I think there is a lot of mystery around how AI actually works, and that mystery makes people either overcomplicate things or it makes them dismiss it entirely. So here's a plain language version of how AI decides who to recommend AI systems are like the world's most well-read research assistant, right? They absorbed an enormous amount of information, like websites, articles, reviews, directories, press coverage, social media, all of it. So when a buyer asks a question, that research assistant goes to work. It pulls together everything that it knows about relevant business and makes a judgment call about who is the best answer for the specific question from the specific buyer. And here's the thing. AI does not just look at whether you exist. It looks at whether it can understand you clearly enough to recommend you with confidence. If what it finds about your business is thin, vague taglines and generic descriptions, marketing language that maybe sounds great to humans, but gives AI nothing specific to work with, it will skip you. Or it may recommend you way down the line or just bury you halfway down paragraph after three competitors of yours are mentioned. That is not where you want to be. But on the other hand, if what it finds is rich, specific, and consistent, a clear brand story, right? We've been talking about brand in this podcast for a while now, and I keep bringing back that topic over and over again recently because brand right now is so important to have your story what is different about you, what's distinctful about you from all the others in the market like you. You wanna bring up specific community descriptions, your actual differentiators stated in plain language, information that is consistent across every place your business shows up in online, then recommending you becomes the obvious move. There's also a trust dimension here that I think is underappreciated. AI is naturally skeptical. It gains confidence when your claims are reinforced by sources outside of your own website. Things like reviews, what are other people saying about you? What do your customers say about you? Press coverage, industry recognition, third-party mentions. When multiple credible sources are saying the same thing about your business, AI's confidence in recommending you goes way up. So earned media is going to play a big role here going forward, right? PR, that's something to consider, for sure. And the reason why it's so important for AI to make sure it can confidently recommend something to you is because if it recommends something and it's not the right match, are you gonna keep using that tool? Probably not, right? And the thing with AI, it goes two ways, because it already gathered all this knowledge about you, right? You two have been working together for a while, so it knows a lot of things about you and your personal preferences, and then it also needs to know about the business that you're researching so that it can recommend that business for your specific situation. It may recommend different business for a different person because of your background, right? What's more important for you versus that other person? So it's kind of a two-way street where, it's making recommendations not only based on what it can find about the business, but also what it knows about you as a trusted advisor. Because again, its goal is to make the best match possible for you. Basically, you wanna think about AI as like a really thorough buyer's agent doing their homework on your company before recommending you to their client. They're not just reading your brochure. They're checking references. They're looking for consistency. They're verifying that what you say about yourself actually lines up with what other people say about you. That is how AI works, and that framing changes how you think about the entire digital presence And here's the uncomfortable truth. Most builder websites, even good ones, even award-winning ones in some cases, were designed for two audiences, human visitors and Google Search crawlers. And they did a decent job at that. But AI reads your website differently than either of those audiences, and most builder websites have not caught up to that reality yet. Let me give you some really concrete examples here of what I mean. How many builder websites do you think lead with something like, "Building your dream home since 1987," or, "Quality craftsmanship you can trust," or, "Where luxury meets livability"? I'm not picking on anyone specifically, but these phrases have been on builder websites for decades, and they made sense in a world where a human was reading them and filling in the blanks with their own assumptions and emotions. But AI cannot fill in the blanks. AI can only work with what you actually have there. And, "Quality craftsmanship you can trust", tells AI almost nothing about who you are, who you build for, where you build, what price points you work in, and what communities are alike, or why a specific buyer should choose you over the builder two miles down the road. Okay? So vague taglines, community names without descriptions that could be plug and play for any other community in the country. The same three adjectives like quality, craftsmanship, and trust that every single builder in the country uses. Inconsistent naming between your website, your Google business profile, your listings on your third-party sites, all of that creates uncertainty for AI. An uncertain AI does not recommend you. It moves on to a builder whose story it can actually tell. Now, here's the thing. Most builders are in this position right now, which means the gap between where most builder websites are and where they need to be for AI is significant. But it also means that there's a huge opportunity to get ahead of your competitors on this right now. The opportunity is real, and it is available to you right now. The moment is hot right now. So what does a builder website that is ready for AI era actually looks like? Well, I want to be practical here because I think it is easy to make this sound more complicated than it needs to be. So it starts with specificity, not vague. Specific. Not beautiful communities across the region, but the actual name of your communities. Where are they? What makes each one distinct? What kind of buyer is it right for? Maybe it's, talking about the top-rated schools in the area. Backs up to protected green space 15 minutes from downtown, priced from the upper 400s. AI cannot summarize what you have not clearly stated, so state it. I don't even wanna talk about pricing here because I feel like I've beat a dead horse with pricing, but people are searching for pricing specifically, right? What search have you ever done on a product where you leave out a price, especially for something as important as a home, right? You're probably putting in the price there, so if your website does not have any pricing, guess what? AI can't determine if you're gonna be the answer for this client because I can't verify that that's in their price range. So again, it means describing your buyer in real language, not demographic targets, the actual human beings you build for and what they care about. Families with young kids who want a yard and a neighborhood where kids can ride bikes. Or it could be move-up buyers who are done compromising on a home office and finally want a three-car garage. Or is it a first-time new construction buyers who have questions about everything and need a builder who will actually answer them? The more specifically you describe who you build for, the better AI can match you to the right buyer at the right moment. Again, the disclaimer here that I wanna make is make sure you still follow the fair housing rules here, right? 'Cause you don't wanna break any fair housing rules, but you do wanna get as specific as you possibly can with who that buyer is. So this means that your differentiators are stated, not implied. "We care about quality" is implied by every builder who has ever poured a foundation. "Our construction managers carry a maximum of eight homes at a time, so they can actually return your calls," that is a differentiator. That is something specific and verifiable that AI can work with and that buyers can evaluate. And it also means consistency. Your website, your community pages, your Google business profile, your Houzz page, any press coverage or industry recognition, as well as your social media presence. AI is synthesizing all of it, When the story is consistent and specific across every touchpoint, AI's confidence in recommending you compounds. When it is inconsistent or thin in some places, AI is gonna hesitate. So this is the work. This is not glamorous, But the builder in our case study went from 16% citation rate to 72% by doing this work thoroughly, consistently, and very thoughtfully. These numbers are real, and so we know that it's possible, just in a matter of months All right, so practical takeaways. Here's what I want you to actually do. Number one, audit your own AI presence right now. Open ChatGPT, open Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, whatever you use. Ask for a builder like you and your market the way your ideal buyer would ask. Use specific criteria, the stuff that your best buyers actually care about. What comes up? If it's not you, notice who it is and how are they described. Because that is your competitive baseline, and it is more useful than almost any other audit you could do right now. Number two, read your website like a stranger would, not like somebody who's been living in it and breathing it read it like an AI that only knows what is on your website. Go to your homepage, your About page, your community pages. Ask yourself honestly, if this was all AI had to go on, could it accurately describe who you are and who you build for? Could it tell a buyer why we are the right choice for them specifically? If the answer is no, or even maybe, that is exactly where you start. And number three, get an AEO assessment. This is something that we do at Anewgo. We look at how your digital presence is performing with AI systems right now, where the gaps are, and what it would take to move the needle. No jargon, no technical overwhelm, just a clear picture of where you stand and what to do about it. So if you want us to take a look, email your website URL to beth@anewgo.com and use subject line AEO assessment. Again, that's beth@anewgo.com, and we're happy to dig in for you. I will link that in the show notes as well, so you can easily find that and send us your website to be analyzed. So here's where I land with all of this. AEO is not a future problem. It is a right now problem. Garman Homes is getting recommended by AI in Raleigh today. A builder in Florida went from invisible to dominant in their AI search results in a matter of months after working with Anewgo. This is not theoretical. This is already happening in your market, whether you're paying attention to it or not. So the question is not whether AI is going to change how buyers find builders, it already is. The question is whether you are the builder AI recommends in your market, or the builder AI has never heard of. And here's the thing that I keep coming back to. The builders with the most resources, the large national production builders with data teams and marketing departments, they are going to figure this out. They always do, right? Think about Google Ads. They can always outspend you on Google Ads. You can never compete with them. And so when they move on this, they will move the scale. The window for regional and boutique builders to get ahead of this and own their AI recommendations before the nationals dominate is open right now. You can directly influence your position here, unlike Google right? And you don't have to spend any money on this, just a little labor, just a little writing. But this window will not stay open forever. We have a blog post series and additional resources dropping as part of this campaign. Links are all in the show notes, and if any of this sparks a question about your specific situation, come find us at anewgo.com. We genuinely love talking about this stuff. All right, well, thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.