In real estate, ChatGPT's answers lean heavily towards the portals — Yad2, Madlan, Homeless — because that is where most of the Hebrew text about property lives. A single estate agent will not out-compete a portal on "אילו דירות יש בחיפה" ("which apartments are available in Haifa"), but can win on "מי המתווך הכי מומלץ בחיפה" ("who is the most recommended estate agent in Haifa") — a question the portal does not answer, because it is not a person. That is exactly where the opportunity is: in questions that ask who, not what.
Why the portals dominate
There is no conspiracy here and no favouritism. There is volume.
When a model looks for Israeli text about property, it finds Yad2, Madlan and Homeless — pages for every city, every neighbourhood and almost every street. An estate agency site with ten pages does not compete with that, and does not need to try.
The expensive mistake here is to invest in exactly that fight: writing pages that try to list properties, competing on "דירות למכירה ב{עיר}" ("apartments for sale in {city}"), and losing to a portal that has a thousand times more content on the same subject. That is money burned in a direction that is already taken.
The questions an estate agent can win
Here are real phrasings from the bank of questions we run in this industry:
- מי המתווך הכי מומלץ ב{עיר}? ("who is the most recommended estate agent in {city}?")
- איזה משרד תיווך הכי טוב ב{עיר}? ("which estate agency in {city} is the best?")
- מי מתווכי הנדל״ן הכי טובים ב{עיר}? ("who are the best real estate agents in {city}?")
- מחפש מתווך ב{עיר}, מי הכי מומלץ? ("looking for an estate agent in {city}, who is the most recommended?")
What they all have in common: they ask who, not what. None of them is answered by a list of properties. A portal is not a person, is not an agency, and cannot be the answer to the question "who is recommended" — even when it holds a thousand times more text.
That is why the picture here is less bleak than it seems. You are not losing to the portal on these questions. In most cases there is simply no answer at all — the engine replies with general principles about how to choose an estate agent, without naming anyone. Whoever gets into that space first gets in unopposed.
The most local industry of them all
In no other industry is place as present as it is here. Almost every question in real estate includes a city, and often a neighbourhood.
What that means in practice: the city and the neighbourhood are the entity the question contains, and writing them out explicitly is not keyword stuffing — it is what lets the model connect you to the question. An agency that writes "we operate in central Israel" is not connected to a question about Ramat Gan. An agency that writes about Ramat Gan, and about the neighbourhoods inside it, is.
And a warning belongs here too: do not write pages for areas you do not genuinely cover. A page about Beersheba written by an agency from Petah Tikva that does not know that market will read like exactly what it is, and a client who arrives through it will find that out in the first conversation. The opportunity is in the areas you are genuinely strong in, and in those areas in depth.
Tama 38, pinui-binui, and developer projects
This is a separate cluster of questions, and most agencies treat it as though it were the same industry. It is not.
The questions are different — what to check before signing a Tama 38 agreement (the national plan under which an existing building is reinforced and extended), how long pinui-binui (demolish-and-rebuild) takes, what the difference between them is — and the competitors for those answers are entirely different: developers, real estate lawyers and construction supervisors, not estate agencies.
If you do that work, it is worth treating it as an industry with pages of its own. And if you do not — there is no reason to write about it at all, because every page like that dilutes the connection between you and what you actually do.
The same is true of Mechir LaMishtaken, the state's subsidised housing programme, and of tax questions: real questions people ask, with answers that have an official source — the Israel Tax Authority and the Ministry of Construction and Housing. If you write about them, tie the answer to the source rather than to memory.
Where does text about you appear today?
It is worth making this list once, because it is usually shorter than people expect:
- A profile on the portals — Yad2, Madlan, Homeless, WinWin. Real text that the engines read, but built to display properties rather than to answer "who is recommended".
- Google Business Profile — short, but one of the few places where a business name, a city and an industry appear together and consistently.
- The local press — an interview or a quote in a local paper is exactly the kind of source an engine leans on.
- Facebook groups — this one needs care. A large part of the content there is not accessible to outside reading, so a warm recommendation in a closed group may not count at all.
The difference between the last two is the point: text a person sees and a machine does not read does not exist for this purpose.
What to write on an estate agency's website
One strong page for every area you genuinely work in, not one page that lists them all.
The reason is mechanical: when someone asks about Ramat Gan, the model looks for text that talks about Ramat Gan in depth. A page that mentions twenty neighbourhoods gives each of them a single line, and holds no answer to any question. A page about Ramat Gan that explains what is happening in that market, which streets are in demand and why, and what to check before buying — answers.
And the page that pays off most is usually the one nobody writes: what agency commission costs, and exactly what you get for it. A question that is asked all the time, that almost no agency answers in writing, and that whoever answers it honestly gets connected to almost on their own.
How to know whether it worked
You measure before and after, with exactly the same questions.
Write five to ten questions a client would ask — without the agency's name — about the cities you genuinely work in, and record who gets mentioned. Once you have published a page or been covered in the local press, ask again. Wording that changes between checks makes the comparison worthless.
Want to see who gets mentioned in your city today? The check is free — it asks what a customer asks and shows who comes up.
Frequently asked questions
- Why do the portals always come up and I do not?
- Because most of the Hebrew text about property lives there. Yad2, Madlan and Homeless cover every city and every neighbourhood, so for a question like which apartments are available in Haifa they are the natural answer. That does not mean there is no place for you — it means your place is in other questions.
- Which questions can an estate agent win?
- Questions that look for a person or an agency rather than a list of properties: who the most recommended estate agent in the city is, which estate agency in the area is best, who to turn to when selling an apartment. A portal is not a person and cannot be the answer to a question like that.
- How important is the city in my content?
- More than in any other industry. Questions in real estate almost always include a place, so the city and the neighbourhood are the entity the question contains. Writing them out explicitly is not keyword stuffing — it is what makes the connection possible.
- What about Tama 38 and pinui-binui?
- That is a separate cluster of questions with entirely different competitors — developers, lawyers and construction supervisors, not estate agencies. If you do that work, it is worth treating it as a separate industry with pages of its own.
- Does a Yad2 profile help me appear in the answers?
- It helps in that there is text about you somewhere the engines read, and that is worth something. But the profile is built to display properties, not to answer the question of who the recommended estate agent is — so it is almost never enough on its own.
- Should I write one page for all the neighbourhoods, or a page per neighbourhood?
- A page for every area you genuinely work in. One page that lists twenty neighbourhoods gives each of them a single line and answers no question in depth; a page about one area does. Do not write pages for areas you do not genuinely cover.