Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Free Wifi From Google

If you are tired of paying your local cariier for DSL, or your local Cable Company for Broadband then Google to the rescue. Google always the innovator, has made a very generous offer of Free, thats right Free Broadband Internet Access.

http://www.google.com/tisp/

From the Tisp Web Page: Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

The Free TISP Kit:

Vista towards Google

Vista-
Definition:  view or prospect, especially. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage. 

Microsoft made its move for world domination yesterday. All kidding aside Vista has gotten great reviews for its interface, and bad reviews from geeks.

CNET is calling Vista just an expensive upgrade to XP.

So what does that have to do with online marketing?

Page Rank is Moving

Page Rank is updating, so your green bar might shake and rattle a bit over the next few days.

Google Pinger

Google Blog

I missed this last week. Google has recently added the ability to ping their blog engine. The ping link is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 .

Goofy Google

I was doing a search yesterday and thought it pretty bad that everyones favorite search engine-Google. Seemed to think that a "Parked Domain" site should be positioned in the top 10 for a competitive search.

When I queried the term "Redondo Beach Condos", the number three position was for a site that is a parked domain.

I think they call that "relevancy". Or not.

I ran the search again just before publishing this search and it is still there.

Tags: Real Estate Google

Get High Rankings In Google!

Sorry for the title I couldn't resist. If you have been online for anytime at all then you have been barraged by Google Hype.

SoI thought I would pass along a cool video that is all about Google. It runs 40 minutes. This video is great as a documentary. I have always been amazed at Google's PR (publicity not page rank) machine more than I have their algo, as great as that is.

But seriously their Publicity machine is monstrous and would make James Carville blush! They can spin baby.

Anyway, check out the video, but don't take anything they say as gospel. I caught a couple things said that is seemingly a very minor part of the algo, if used at all. They have their story and they are sticking to it.

Just remember, there is Zero money in you doing well in your positions in the search engines. If you are an engine you only make money from the ads. Check it out.

MySpace Beats Google for Number One

So turns out that Social Networking website MySpace, )you know  that real easy to navigate and real easy on the eye website) just kicked the tail of the God Of Search Google.And Yahoo, and MSN and well, every website on the web to become the number one internet website in terms of traffic.

The most popular U.S. website, according to research from Hitwise, writes the Globe and Mail (Reg. required). In the week ended July 8, 4.5 percent of all U.S. visits to the web were to MySpace.com, and traffic to the social-networking site has soared 132 percent in the last year alone, Hitwise said.

This is interesting for a number of reasons including:

1. How does a non search site be number one in popularity?
2. The portal is a mess and for the most part purposeless.
3. It proves again that the web is about fragmantation and if you are not capturing these visitors to you website, they may never come back.

The point being this ain't Television. The current state of affairs last about a couple years and game over.Meaning, you can't just say yah I have the search engine thing down, and call it a day.

I have said it before, I will say it again, the money is in your list. If you do not have an extensive list, you do not have an online business.

Google April Fools

I have posted about Google being all things to all people as they have danced with being a portal of non-portals.

Goodness, they are even going after the MLS. But today, April the 1st, it seems they poke fun at themselves. Or us.

In the name of April Fools Day they have "launched" Google Romance Beta. Try to join and you get a "gotcha!" type message.

So Google is playing with us to keep us always curious about what will they do next? What image will they display with their logo to commemorate the day? For example during the Olympics they incorporated an Olympic like figure into their logo. And it changed daily.

This is to some degree viral marketing.

I wonder what kind of great changes our business would experience if we made it more fun to do business with us. What can you do to delight your clients and prospects. How do we get more personal and less Corporate?

Let's face it. Life in the big city can suck. As a Realtor, you deal with people daily that despite their good intentions, always come with inherant risks of litigation. This can harden our personalities that can leak out into our image.

I remember, my ex-partner once sold a condo in Marina del Rey and the buyer threatened a law suit because--get this--there was a tad of yellow discoloration on the tile beneath the fridge. It was not disclosed, and the buyer was shocked to find the tile a bit faded and yellowed.

He went out of pocket to solve the issue. And he got just a tad more skeptical and a little more jaded . This legal stuff can you get one to "Look over your shoulder", before going into each new deal.

If you have had any bit of time in this business then you can relate. And, if this market does go South ( I don't think it will, but thats a debate for another day) and you haven't been in a market like this before. Prepare for an ugly side of humanity that you never knew existed.

Greed is ugly in an up market. But survival turns the sweetest of honey into bitter foes.

So what can you do to make your people have more fun with you?

Have a happy person answer your phone. Be happy yourself. Insert your "happy" into everything you do and touch. Brainstorm ideas to be Google like. Such that your visitors and clients will feel a little better. Maybe all you give them is a smile.

Be careful not to be gimicky as that can seem cheap.

Like Google, make people want to gravitate to you to get some of that mojo.

On the topic of April Fools, some marketers warn against fooling your clients & audience. I have read conservative financial advisor newsletters who hyped up "world changing investments" that would make gasoline obsolete, only to reveal at the end that it was a joke.

I think there is right a wrong way and to play April Fools jokes. I think it makes sense in the Google example. But I also think there are scenarios where it would be a real bad idea.

So I wonder... What do you think? When would it be appropriate to run a Fools trick? When is it not?

Also, can you thnk of ways to delight your prospects and clients? How could this blog do that for you?

Google Basing the MLS II

Well it seems that as soon as I posted my mls.google.com story about Google Base, I started seeing similar takes in the real estate industry and elsewhere.

Blogs are that way aren't they? Topics often firing off simutaneously.

I saw references in Inman News as well as off-real estate blog marketing sites.

GoodRoI actually pointed out how the results seem to be showing up in the regular SERPS ( Search Engine Ranking Position). Perhaps a beta test of some kind.

GoogdROI references a poster over at Webmasterworld as having said that this is going to be a mess as every Realtor massively uploads their MLS listings and the rest of the MLS. This will cause a massive duplicate content problem. Not to mention all the vendors will get into the game of uploading your listings as a service.

Why would they do that? So they can get the traffic back to their site thats why. One poster actually brought out a brilliant point.

Drumat5280 said:

Google Base scares me.

I can handle competition from other sites, but competition from Google itself scares me in the classified ad market.

I am sure Craigslist and Monster are also starting to get scared.

This actually could be interpreted as a shot across the bow of agents trying to get Natural search results. If the bulk of the results are Google Base for real estate, then agents will have no choice but to pay for clicks.

This shows that results in natural search can come from, not only natural SERPS, but Local Search and perhaps Google Base. Oy Vey!

Suing Google

It isn't new for google to get sued. But there is a California company suing them becuase...get this...

The company is suing becuase they got kicked out of google!

Google Inc.'s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack Friday in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from its index.

The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google's Internet-leading search engine since January 2001.