Chicago’s top-producing real estate agents may have the sales volume, reviews and industry recognition to establish themselves as market leaders. But when homebuyers ask AI who they should hire, most of those agents are nowhere to be found.
New research from Local Falcon, an AI search visibility platform, found that 94.2% of Chicago agents included in the RealTrends Verified 2026 rankings who have their own websites were not cited by ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI tools. Of 138 ranked agents analyzed, just eight appeared in AI-generated answers.
The findings are part of Local Falcon’s Realtor AI Visibility Index, which examines how AI platforms respond to real estate-related searches across the 100 largest U.S. cities. In Chicago, the study identified 3,429 citations from 114 sources.
“What makes a top producer leaves no public trace, and the public trace is all AI can read,” said David Hunter, CEO of Local Falcon. “It can’t see the MLS or a production ranking, and it definitely doesn’t really understand the relationships you have.”
AI relies on information it can find online, including Google Business Profiles, reviews and webpages that identify agents as among the best in a particular market.
“These are not things that close sales, but they are what can often get you in the door,” Hunter said.
Chicago ranked third among the 100 largest U.S. cities for the number of distinct agents cited by AI. The study identified 73 Chicago agents, behind San Francisco, with 84, and Columbus, with 77. The national median was 42.
But even among Chicago’s biggest producers, success did not guarantee AI visibility. Of the 45 agents ranked in RealTrends’ top 10 across five Chicago team-size categories, 15 had websites listed on their profiles. Of those, 13 were never cited.
Hunter said the agents who are showing up are not necessarily the ones with the highest production numbers. Instead, they tend to have a combination of strong Google profiles, favorable reviews and highly localized content.
“They publish the page a buyer searches for, one naming the best agents in a specific neighborhood,” Hunter said. Eighteen of the 25 most-cited agent websites in the study had such a page.
AI searches are also often more focused on specific neighborhoods than the city. Among the pages cited in Chicago were lists focused on neighborhoods including South Loop and West Loop, along with team websites targeting West Town, Wicker Park and Lincoln Park.
Google Business Profiles were the largest source of AI citations in Chicago, accounting for 38.6% of citations. Zillow followed at 16%, Realtor.com at 5.2%, Yelp at 3.9%, US News at 3.7%, FastExpert at 3.1% and agent-owned websites represented 14.5%, with Chicago Agent magazine also appearing among the top 15 sources.
For agents looking to improve their visibility, Hunter said the first step is to start with their Google Business Profile, particularly by building up reviews.
“That profile is the biggest single source of citations we found, and review count is the one field on it that tracks with getting named,” Hunter said.
The numbers reinforce that point. Profiles that AI cited most frequently had a median of about 325 reviews, compared with 26 for profiles cited only once. Ratings didn’t make much difference, either. The median rating was 5.0 out of 5.0, even for profiles the AI results never mentioned.
Hunter recommends that agents also make sure their website is connected to their Google listing and that their primary Google category is accurate.
The next step is to create content aimed at the neighborhoods they serve rather than the broader metropolitan market.
But agents shouldn’t assume that showing up in an AI response once means they’ll stay visible. Hunter said results can vary depending on the wording of a search, the platform being used and the location of the person searching.
“One check won’t tell you much,” he said. “Answers move with where the searcher is standing, they differ by platform, so you need to run several searches across several platforms in several neighborhoods to get an accurate view.”
Overall, the data suggests that being highly productive isn’t enough to get noticed.
Hunter adds, “Chicago’s agents are some of the most productive in the country, but AI doesn’t know they exist. These are people closing hundreds of millions in volume, and ChatGPT has never heard of them. The ones who do show up aren’t necessarily the biggest. They’re the ones with a strong Google profile and pages that answer the question at the neighborhood level. That’s a fixable problem, but most agents don’t even know they have it.”