Google changed search. Here is what agents should do about it.

Open Google right now and type a question. Not a search for a specific address or a business name. A question. What should I know before buying a house in Edmonton? How do I know if I should sell my home this year? What does a home inspection actually cover?

A growing number of those searches are now returning an AI-generated answer at the top of the page – not ten website links, but a synthesized response with sources collapsed behind a button that many people skip.

Google has not made AI mode the default for every search. But it has made it significantly more prominent. And the category of search most affected – informational queries – is precisely the category that most real estate agents have been building content around for years.

In a recent episode of their weekly sales and marketing show, Andrew Fogliato and Taylor Hack broke down what this shift means in practice, and what the agents who will still be visible in two years are doing about it right now.

The shift that is actually happening

The change is not that Google has replaced all search results with AI. It is more specific than that, and more important for agents to understand.

Informational queries are changing fastest. Someone asking how to prepare a house for sale, what the difference is between fixed and variable mortgage rates, or what a home inspection covers is increasingly getting an AI–generated answer rather than a list of blog posts to choose from.

Commercial and transactional searches – homes for sale in Sherwood Park, best agent in Edmonton, sell my house in St. Albert – are not changing at the same rate. Those still surface listings, directories and agent profiles.

The practical implication: generic educational content is becoming less valuable as a traffic driver. Hyper-specific local content is becoming more valuable because that is exactly the kind of source an AI system needs to cite when it cannot generate the answer itself.

“If you search homes for sale, Newmarket, it’s very different,” Fogliato said during the episode. “It shows the sites on the right, very small, then gives some brief info, then goes into top real estate brokerages. But an informational search, that’s already defaulting to AI mode.”

Why guides are the answer – and what makes one worth downloading

The response to this shift is not to stop creating content. It is to create content that AI has to source rather than content AI can replace.

A blog post explaining what a home inspection covers can be summarized and synthesized. A pricing guide for detached homes in Sherwood Park with current data, specific neighbourhood breakdowns and a scoring framework built on 20 years of local transactions cannot.

That is the distinction. Generic information gets absorbed. Specific, local, expert-authored content gets cited.

Fogliato uses what he calls the SAGE framework – a concept he traces to marketer Nicholas Kusmich – for evaluating whether a downloadable guide is worth creating. The four criteria are short, actionable, goal-oriented and easy to consume.

Short means two to three pages maximum. Not an ebook. Not a comprehensive guide to everything. A focused resource someone reads in five minutes and immediately finds useful.

Actionable means there is something they can do with it. A checklist they can walk through. A decision framework they can apply. A comparison they can use to evaluate options. Information alone does not qualify.

Goal-oriented means it moves them closer to something they actually want. The home prep checklist Fogliato described – three pages, walk through the property, check things off – works because the person reading it has a clear goal and the guide advances it directly.

Easy to consume means no friction, no jargon, readable in a single sitting. If someone has to work to understand it, they will not finish it and they will not share it.

How to distribute a guide and what to say

A guide that sits on a website waiting to be found is not a lead magnet. It is a document. The distribution strategy is what turns it into a business asset.

Hack described the approach that is working in his market: create a short video on social media that introduces the problem the guide solves, reference the guide as the resource that answers it, and give people a simple way to get it.

“Is this a good one? No. Is it the best of these kinds? Or is something going to come to the market two weeks from now that will make you feel regret from having put an offer on this one? That’s why you need context, and you get context from guides,” he said.

The call to action in the video does not have to be complicated: “DM me and I will send it over.” “Text me and I will email you the PDF.” The friction should be as low as possible, but the contact information exchange should still happen, because that is what turns a viewer into a lead.

Fogliato noted a version that works particularly well for agents with a physical print run: tell the audience you have a few extra copies from the printers from clients who moved and did not need them. Offer to drop one off or send a digital version. The physical scarcity, even if the digital version exists, creates a sense that this is a real, finished resource rather than something generated in ten minutes.

Map the guide to where the client actually is

The single most common mistake with lead magnets is mismatching the content to the stage of the buyer. A guide on how to hire a real estate agent is bottom-of-funnel content. A guide on things to do in Edmonton with your family is top-of-funnel. Most agents create one and use it everywhere, which means it is wrong for most of the people who see it.

Fogliato described what a properly mapped approach looks like. At the top of the funnel – early awareness, no clear timeline – the guide should be useful in a way that is adjacent to real estate. A school zone guide for families. A neighbourhood comparison for someone who is thinking about where they want to end up. Content that is relevant to their life, not just their transaction.

At the middle of the funnel – someone who has identified real estate as the likely solution to a real problem – the guide should help them make a better decision. A pricing guide for the specific area they are considering. A framework for evaluating whether now or later makes more financial sense. Content that helps them get smarter, not just content that pitches the agent.

At the bottom of the funnel – someone who is close to transacting – the guide should address the specific objections standing between them and action. How to know if you should buy or sell first. What to look for in a listing presentation. How to evaluate competing offers.

“In a perfect world, you map out every single life moment they have along the way,” Fogliato said. “Graduating university, getting a job, getting married – and then you look at where on that map you are starting to market to them.”

Become the source AI pulls from

The longer-term implication of this strategy is the one that matters most.

AI search systems – Google’s, OpenAI’s, Anthropic’s – do not generate answers from nothing. They pull from existing sources, synthesize them and cite the most credible, specific ones. An agent who has a PDF on their website with the title Pricing Guide to Sherwood Park Detached Homes – Q2 2026 is a source. An agent who has a blog post called Five Things to Know About Buying in Edmonton is not.

The guides that get created today, distributed through social, collected behind a simple contact form and updated quarterly become the asset that positions an agent as the local authority AI systems return to when someone asks a question about that market.

The window is shorter than most people expect. The agents who build these assets now are better positioned when the shift becomes more pronounced.

“The further they are away from me and the transaction, I typically do less gating on it,” Fogliato said. “Because at that point I am just being helpful. And then it is figuring out the point where it makes sense to put that gate in.”

The full episode covers the current AI landscape across Google, OpenAI, Claude and Grok, what the shift to AI mode means for real estate portals like Realtor.ca, the privacy implications of putting client data into AI tools, and why email as a distribution channel has a shorter runway than most marketers want to admit.

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