Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Real Estate News Paper Online Advertising

Or:Real Estate MLS gone.. again

Inman recently included a piece that alerted me to a new vortal that inlcudes newspapers' property listings. The site is called Homescape.com, a division of Classified Ventures. They have mirrored sites at HomeHunter.com and NewHomeNetwork.com.

Why isn't there alarm bells and prophesies of Armageddon going off in the Realtor world?

This site is aggregating "their" listings. We just talked about this at Real Estate MLS gone.

If you were to do a search for Sacramento homes, you would find the on line classifieds feed from the Sacramento Bee.

I did find that at least for Sacramento, the MLS listings that the newspaper-on line mls advertising was not included in the feed.

I guess if I were a Realtor, I could be upset for a few reasons.

One. Why don't they include the MLS listings? Two. And more disconcerning. Is this the beginning of the the big push to replace the MLS sharing that has been the mainstay and foundation of "Realty" Marketing as we know it. Three. Does the Realtor need another industry to compete for on line positioning? Especially when the Realtor community subsidizes many of these media outlets existence?

Real Estate MLS gone

According to recent reports by Borrell & Associates, real-estate brokers' and agents' websites are losing online market share of the real estate listings marketplace. They report that certain keyword real-estate searches have recently began to ignore most of the Realtor Websites in the search engines.

According to Borrell, real-estate agents' websites now populate Google's top 10 results only 9% of the time, vs. 29% only a year ago.

Newspaper real-estate sites now get in the top 10 about 12% of the time, vs. 16% a year ago.

To quote the popular song...."isn't it ironic"?

Realtor offices and agents pay their local and national Board of Realtors, Department of Real Estate and National Association of Realtors to protect them. Yet these lobbyists only serve to create the napster affect thru the IDX and VOW initiatives.

Yet, in many of the cases, the Newspaper sites that are beating the pants off the Realtor in search engine referrals, are getting the data from their friendly, local Realtor.

Does anyone in the Realtor community care that your "advocates" are giving your business away?

OK so here is the bad news. The above mentioned report is from a year ago (Dec, 2003). And the search engine environment has only gotten tougher as Google seems to have given way to relevancy and would rather you spend your money on their ADWords.

In September of this year Borrell released a report called:

2004 ANALYSIS:  ONLINE REAL ESTATE ADVERTISING COMES OF AGE. A superheated home-sales market has masked some subtle shifts in the $11.5 billion Real Estate advertising category.  Homes are selling faster than agents can advertise them, and a new, less expensive way of reaching home buyers has emerged in the form of MLS-based Web sites.  Meanwhile, an erosion of traditional media advertising -- particularly for newspapers --  has been occurring.  In 1997, newspapers received $755 per home sold in advertising revenues; today it's $605.   This report examines the shift and and provides additional insights from surveys with classified advertising, online managers, and MLS executives. 

Google Search Engine

Lots of Google News:

I recently installed Google's Desktop Search. Still not sure of the point.

However, lots of Privacy and Security guru's argue it gives Google and others too much access to our behavior. You be the judge. I chose to uninstall for another reason. It was dragging my system down.
More Conspiratorialish Google resources:
What Google Knows About You
Anonymize the Google Cookie
Gartner:Don't Use Google Desktop in Search 

In more Search Engine News:
IProspect-The "Original Search Engine Marketing Firm" sold to Isobar, the global full service digital network (an Aegis Company) for $50 million.

A November study shows that Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. FireFox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing. Other Cool Browser: Opera. So do web designers have to start compying with these browsers unique design standards?

Comment: The answer speaks to the power of Microsoft and certain marketing principles.Do you think as web surfers get more serious about their web viewing, that they will stop putting up with the MS barrage of security holes? My take is that the answer is no. Old habits are hard to brake.

Just like Macs are better computers, but we all use a Microsoft Operated machine. Sure Opera and Firefox browsers are better, faster, more secure. However, standard is Internet Explorer.

Real Estate & The Internet

Broadband Has Record Quarter

According to the recent release from the Leichtman Research Group, the twenty largest cable and DSL providers in the US - representing about 95% of the market - achieved record net additions in the third quarter of 2004.

Flashy and bulkier webpages are becoming more possible for Real Estate Marketers to keep.

What is the Definition of "BLOG"?

Merriam-Webster dictionary has just listed the Blog word. It says the word "blog" has earned a place on its list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam reports that "blog" ranks as one of the most looked-up words on its Web site this year. The dictionary defines a "blog" as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks."

Real Estate Marketing and SEO

MSN is launching their new search engine Thursday. The Redmond, Wash. software maker on Thursday will open to the public its service for searching the Internet after eighteen months of development. The implications for the Online Realtor-Marketer is significant.

Up untitl now, the only game in town has been Google's and Yahoo's own engine and their "affiliate" feeds. In fact, MSN has licensed Yahoo's search data until the end of the year.

Now the online real estate marketer has another chance to capture high search positions for their real estate websites. Higher search positions across a large variety of keyword phrases can increase traffic significantly.

We Have Run Out of the Web

According to Forbes, we may be running out of space on the internet. Hard to believe, but as third world countries come on board, experts worry about the internets architecture.