For years, SEO was the foundation of digital visibility for multifamily marketing. Rank high on Google and your property attracted more organic traffic and converted more leads. But relying solely on SEO is no longer enough to match the new ways search engines surface results.
In 2025, renters have begun using AI-powered tools, conversational search, and answer-based results to find apartments with less effort and fewer clicks. In response, Google’s algorithm has shifted how it displays information — often answering renter questions before they even visit a website.
To keep your property visible, your strategy needs to go beyond SEO and cover these three new forms of search:
1. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
AEO is all about earning placement in answer-based results.
Renters are now asking Google and AI tools highly specific questions like:
“Which apartments allow large dogs near University Park?”
“What’s the best community with a fitness center in Deep Ellum?”
Instead of simply offering a result list of links, Google now pulls short, structured responses directly into the top of results through sections like ‘People Also Ask’ or AI-generated summaries.
Adapting to AEO means structuring your property’s information — amenities, pet policies, floor plans, and neighborhood features — in ways that Google can easily read and repackage as answers. This approach increases the likelihood that your property becomes the answer that Google shows first.
Main Takeaway: Focus on clarity and structure: add FAQs, use natural question-and-answer phrasing, and make sure your property details are complete and specific.
2. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Renters are now asking conversational questions within generative AI platforms/tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are changing how information is discovered. They don’t crawl and supply links in the same way Google does — they synthesize answers from multiple high-quality sources.
Adapting to GEO means ensuring your property information is clear, consistent, and detailed across all your digital presences (like your website, Google Business Profile, and ILS listings) so these AI models can easily scan your information and reference your community accurately when responding to renters’ prompts.
3. Search Generative Experience (SGE)
SGE is Google’s newest evolution — and the one with the biggest impact on multifamily marketing.
Instead of the usual list of blue links, SGE blends traditional results with AI-generated overviews at the top of the page. These summaries highlight the most relevant answers, photos, and business listings before the user scrolls.
If your content isn’t optimized for SGE, your property could be buried under the AI overview — invisible to most renters.
Optimizing for SGE ensures your listings, FAQs, and content appear inside those AI summaries where renters are making decisions.
Main Takeaway: The properties that succeed in SGE will be the ones maintaining active, integrated ecosystems — consistent GBP updates, fresh local pages, and accurate structured data across all listings.
What Does This Mean for Multifamily?
It means that search visibility is no longer one-dimensional.
Your website, social media, blog content, landing pages, and Google Business Profile, all need to work together to help your properties show up everywhere renters are looking.
In summary:
Traditional SEO helps you rank.
AEO helps you answer.
GEO helps you appear in AI summaries.
SGE ensures you’re seen in Google’s new AI experience.
Together, these create a full-spectrum strategy designed for how renters actually search in 2025.
How to Evolve Your Multifamily Marketing Strategy
At Swifty, we’ve been rethinking how search visibility should work for multifamily.
We’ve developed a new, all-in-one approach that connects these four forms of optimization — helping your properties stay visible across search engines and AI platforms alike.
We’ll be announcing more soon, book a meeting with us now to get ahead.
The future of search belongs to those who adapt early.
