The portals own the property search and they always will. What they have never owned is the question that comes first — "which agent should I actually use in Chester?" That one now goes to an assistant, and it answers with two or three firms.
A seller does not start on Rightmove. Rightmove is where they look at houses. Before that there is a quieter conversation — who should we get out to value it, who actually sells round here, who will not waste our time. That conversation used to happen at the school gates and in the search bar. A growing share of it now happens with an assistant, and it gives two or three names in a sentence. Your listings being everywhere does not help you win that. Your listings are the property’s marketing. This is yours.
If almost every page is a listing, there is very little on your own site that says who the FIRM is, which streets you actually sell, and why somebody should instruct you. An assistant reading it learns about houses, not about you.
"Covering the local area" is not a place. Neston, Parkgate, Heswall, Willaston, Burton, Ness — the villages you genuinely dominate — have to appear as words somewhere, or you cannot be matched to them.
Sold prices, average time to sell, percentage of asking achieved. Agents quote these on a doorstep and almost never publish them. Written down, they are the most citable thing an agency owns.
A landlord and a seller are different people asking different questions. One page trying to answer both usually answers neither well enough to be named for either.
Valuation enquiries arrive in the evening, because that is when people talk about moving. Ringing out then does not delay the instruction — it hands it to whoever picks up.
Your average fee, your conversion, your numbers.
An average fee on a mid-market sale. ⭐ And it is the understated figure: an instruction usually brings a second side of the chain, and a landlord instruction brings a management fee every month for years. Change every number to yours.
We ask the four assistants the question your clients ask and send you their answers word for word. One report, no charge, no account. You cannot fix a thing you have not measured.
One answer is a coin toss; they vary by day, wording and location. So we ask the SAME questions again every 7, 14 or 28 days and show you the line. That is the difference between a curiosity and evidence.
A UK number for the business, live in minutes, that is not the phone your family rings. And when you are ready, Optiman Answered picks it up when you cannot — takes the enquiry, takes the message, and tells you straight away.
We cannot move you up Rightmove, Zoopla or OnTheMarket. Nobody outside those companies can, and anybody telling you otherwise is guessing. What we can measure is the surface they do not control: when somebody asks an assistant which agent to use in your town, are you one of the names? Which assistants say you, which do not, and which competitor comes up instead? That is a narrower claim than "we will win you instructions". It is also one we can put in writing and hand you for nothing.
Because it is a different question. Portal spend buys your PROPERTIES an audience. This is about your FIRM being named when somebody asks who to instruct — and unlike a portal listing, being named costs nothing per enquiry once it is true.
Increasingly, and it skews towards the enquiries you most want: somebody moving into the area who knows nobody, and somebody deliberately avoiding the agent who let them down last time. The free check tells you what it says about you today.
Sometimes, and it is worth knowing when you do not. Assistants are not reading your board count — they are reading what is written on the open web, and a dominant local agent with a listings-only website is one of the most common blind spots we find.
Yes, and often better. "Letting agent in Neston" has far less competition for the answer than the sales equivalent, and a landlord instruction is recurring revenue rather than a one-off fee.
Nothing, and there is no account. Your firm name and your town is enough. We send you what four assistants said, word for word.
A number of your own that takes the address and the name when the office is shut.
How a number worksTell us your firm name, your town and what you do. We put the question your clients actually ask to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, send you what each one said word for word, and tell you what it would take to change it.