Commercial real estate is a self-directed, online-first search where the same buyer keeps researching independently even after engaging a broker, so your firm’s discoverability is not a first-touch event; it is a moat you hold through the entire transaction.
A CRE tenant or investor does not behave like a homebuyer being shown listings. They start on the internet, they build a shortlist, they shop the marketplaces, and when they finally bring in a broker they keep running their own searches in parallel. The decision is informed online from first interest to closing, which means your listings, your brand, and your expertise have to be findable the whole way through, not just at the point of first contact.
That is why a generic real estate playbook underperforms here. The intent is high-value and concentrated, the dominant listing marketplaces own enormous audiences, paid clicks for commercial intent are expensive, and the buyer is comparing you against the open web at every step. We build around those exact realities, and every claim on this page is backed by a real source, listed at the bottom.
The case for doing this differently is not our opinion. It is what the data says, every figure sourced below.
The search starts on a screen, not with a broker.
Commercial real estate is online-first at the very top of the funnel. In the LoopNet and Google study, six in ten tenants and investors begin their property search on the internet before any other source, and only 7% start by driving the desired area. The old assumption that a relationship or a drive-by kicks off the search no longer describes how most deals begin.
The takeaway is not “buy more clicks.” It is that your firm has to exist where that first search happens: in organic results, in the listing marketplaces, and increasingly in the AI answer. If the search starts on a screen and your firm is not on it, you are not in the consideration set before a conversation ever happens.
Hughes Marino, a tenant-rep brokerage summarizing the same Google and LoopNet research, put the split plainly: 59% of respondents first go to online tools to search for properties, while only 23% start out using a broker. The first move is digital, and the broker enters later.
Six in ten CRE searches start online. Only 7% start by driving the area.
The first move is digital, not a drive-by
Your client keeps searching after they hire you.
Most marketing assumes the job is done once the lead becomes a client. In CRE it is the opposite. In the 2023 LoopNet and Google study, 80% of tenants and 89% of investors who hired a broker continued to perform their own online searches, as frequently as always, often, or sometimes. The same research found that 78% of investors and 80% of tenants consider the internet essential to their commercial property search.
That changes what your digital presence is for. It is not just a lead-capture surface at the top of the funnel; it is a working tool your client returns to throughout the engagement. Firms that keep their listings current, their market content useful, and their brand visible stay in front of the client during the deal. Firms that treat the website as a brochure quietly lose mindshare to the open marketplaces every week the deal stays open.
89% of investors keep searching online after they hire a broker. Your site works the whole deal.
Clients never stop searching online
Most closed deals start with a property found online.
Discoverability is not a soft branding metric in CRE; it traces straight to transactions. In the 2023 LoopNet and Google study, 61% of investors purchased and 51% of tenants leased a property they first found online. The screen is not just where the search starts; it is where the deal that closes was first surfaced.
So the question for a firm is direct: when a tenant or investor is forming their shortlist online, are your listings and your market presence on it? A majority of completed deals trace back to that first online discovery, which means every listing that is hard to find, slow to load, or invisible to AI search is a deal you were never in the running for. We build the listing and content infrastructure that gets your inventory discovered at the moment the shortlist is being formed.
Online discovery drives the close
In the same study, 78% of investors and 80% of tenants call the internet essential to their commercial property search.
Source: LoopNet and Google 2023 study (via Market Connections)AI search is rewriting the CRE first search.
The online search CRE depends on is changing shape. Pew Research found that an AI summary now appears on about 18% of Google searches, and when one does, people click a traditional result far less often: 8% of the time versus 15% with no summary. For a vertical where the deal starts with an online search, an answer the searcher never clicks past is a real visibility risk.
Being on page one is no longer the finish line; you have to be the firm the AI assembles into its answer. That is a different build: structured data, clear entity signals, market content written to be quoted, and a listing presence the AI layer can read. As Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Land summarized the research, when AI Overviews show up, click-through rates fall and sessions end more often. We build CRE pages and listings to be cited, not just ranked, so your firm survives the shift.
AI answers are eating the click
AI summaries appeared on roughly 18% of Google searches in March 2025.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2025Attention concentrates where you may not control it.
Online demand in CRE pools on a handful of marketplaces. LoopNet alone reported average monthly traffic of about 11 million unique visitors, totaling over 31,375,000 unique visitors in a single quarter. That is where a large share of tenant and investor attention already is, and most of it sits on a platform your firm does not own.
Renting space on the marketplaces is part of the play, but it is not a strategy on its own; you are one of many listings, paying for placement, with no durable asset to show for it. The firms that win pair marketplace presence with owned channels they control: an organic and AI footprint, a strong Google Business Profile, and a website that captures the demand the marketplaces send searching. We balance the two so you are visible where the audience is and you own the relationship when they convert.
11 million monthly visitors pool on one marketplace you don’t own. Build the channels you do.
Where CRE attention concentrates
A reminder of how much of the audience sits on platforms your firm does not control.
Source: CoStar Group / LoopNet (via BusinessWire)Commercial clicks are expensive, so the landing page has to earn them.
Paid search can buy CRE intent, but the clicks are not cheap, and the lead behind them costs far more. WordStream’s 2026 Google Ads benchmarks put the real estate average cost per click at $3.22 and the average cost per lead at $102.51, among the highest cost per lead of any industry they track. At those prices, paid is a precision instrument, not a volume play.
The number that governs the economics is not the click; it is what happens after it. Real estate posts an average conversion rate of 3.70% in the same data, one of the lowest of any sector, which means a poorly built page can multiply your effective cost per lead while you pay the same premium per click. We point paid budget at tight, high-intent segments and send every click to a page built to convert, so an expensive click has a real chance of becoming a deal. The scale underneath this market justifies the rigor: the NAIOP Research Foundation reports that commercial real estate contributed $3.5 trillion to U.S. GDP and supported 20.4 million jobs in 2025.
59% of respondents first go to online tools to search for properties, while only 23% start out using a broker.
Hughes Marino, tenant-rep brokerage, citing the Google and LoopNet study on commercial real estate search
However, when AI Overviews show up, click-through rates fall, and sessions end more often.
Danny Goodwin, Editorial Director, Search Engine Land
The combined economic contributions of new commercial building development and the operations of existing commercial buildings in 2025 resulted in direct expenditures of $1.4 trillion and contributed $3.5 trillion to U.S. GDP.
NAIOP Research Foundation, Economic Impacts of Commercial Real Estate
Want to own the CRE search from first click to closing?
Commercial real estate is decided online, before you are called and all the way through the deal. We build the program that keeps your firm and your listings findable at every stage: organic search and AEO so you are in the answer, owned channels that balance the marketplaces you cannot control, and paid built around landing pages that convert expensive clicks into real deals.
Let’s map where your firm is showing up in the CRE search today and where the gaps are costing you transactions.
Frequently asked
Do commercial real estate clients really start their search online?
If a client hires a broker, does our website still matter?
Does online visibility connect to deals that close?
How is AI search changing commercial real estate marketing?
Should we just rely on listing marketplaces like LoopNet?
Is paid search worth it for commercial real estate?
Every figure on this page comes from a primary platform, an independent study, or a named industry source. No competing-agency stats, no made-up numbers.
- LoopNet and Google joint study (2014, via GlobeNewswire)
- LoopNet and Google 2023 study (via Market Connections)
- CoStar Group / LoopNet quarterly traffic (via BusinessWire)
- Pew Research Center, AI summaries and click behavior (2025)
- NAIOP Research Foundation, Economic Impacts of Commercial Real Estate
- WordStream, 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks by Industry
- Hughes Marino, Broker or Internet: How CRE Search Is Changing
- Search Engine Land, Google AI Overviews and clicks
