Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Google gets your real estate advertising dollars

Thanks to http://google.weblogsinc.com for this one.

Google never gives its forcasts out to the public.

Howver, the San Francisco Gate claims to have obtained “internal Google Documents” that purport to predict a startling growth-of-advertising curve, in the teeth of bad press over click fraud, out-of-control clickthrough rates in search advertising, and a general plateau effect. Citing 280,000 advertisers this year, the “internal documents” forecast a surge to 378,000 in 2005, and a doubling by 2008 to about 652,000.

Newspapers No, Google Yes

Did you know that Google News reaches more Americans than washingtonpost.com? And that Yahoo News now reaches a larger unique audience in the U.S. than MSNBC.

I know I hardly ever read a paper or get my news from the television anymore. It is always several hours behind what you can get instantly online.

Google IP No

A recent Playboy interview of Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
(ever wonder where the term Page Rank came from?) features the two discussing the company's rapid growth and even brag about how Google's search engine has helped save people's lives.

There is concern that the interview could cause a delay in the Google IPO.

"I don't want to rain on their parade, but I think this interview is going to cause regulatory concern. There could be consequences," said Zuppone, now with Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in New York.

Guaranteed Search Engine (SEO) Results

Or something for nothing.......

It is realistic to expect some kind of guarantee from a service.

When dealing with search engines however, it is not realistic to expect a guarantee of placement in the SERPs (search engine ranking positions). Especially when an SEO firm offers such dramatic results on the cheap.

Common sense dictates that you and everyone else wants a top position. The company that is offering a guaranteed result for $100 does not have magic Google dust to spread over your website. There is no red phone sending your proxy love over to Sergey and crew.

The promise of guaranteed position can only be legitimately offered via one avenue. Pay Per Click.

The trick goes like this: Offer Guaranteed position for a low fee.

Say for instance you have a real estate related website. You want it to position in at number one. Along comes Dr. Feel Good SEO company offering you painless top position (The Traffic part is implied). Read the fine print.

-----You will get that top position as long as your budget is paying for it.-----

Now, I guess as long as this scenario is disclosed everyone will be happy.

However, once your dollar runs out, your position runs out. Unfortunately, I have read pitches that promise to get you position in the search engines. Not even disclosing whether that it is a Pay Per Click (PPC) management offering.

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Side note:

Spider Juice Technologies metaphorical definition of PPC and Natural Search results

PPC- Like a sprinter your campaign takes off full speed only to exaust itself out after about 100 yards (your budget is exausted)

Natural Search Engine results- Like a freight train it takes awhile to get going. But once it gets going, it is hard to stop.
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A firm up in Redmond used the guarantee pitch and have been ordered by the court to refund monies and pay heavy fines on a lack of performance on their guarantee.

There is much scheming by companies wanting to grab a fast buck. They always tug at that place right next to your heart called greed.

A for sure way to avoid being taken is to realize that something so good, that is so competitive is not cheap. That will whittle out most of the scammers for sure.

Google Downgrades Big Sites

A recent post in Webmaster World has confirmed suspicions that Google has downgraded the positions of big sites. Pros are reporting that their SERP's (Search engine ranking positions) have fallen, despite their backlinks having exploded.

By the way to find out your back links in Google you can use the Google Bar, or simply type into the query : link:http://www.yoururl.com

However, that often will only list sites page rank 4 or above.

So a better way is to type:
.yoururl. -site:www.yoururl.com
This will net you all the backlinks and sites that mention your site, other than your site's pages.

The best way to find out all the links that Google has is to go to Yahoo and type: link:http://www.yoururl.com
Since Yahoo has most of the sites that Google has, it is a good bet that Google knows about these too.

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In other news, I found Forbes release of the most expensive houses.

A cool California mortgage broker site

When Does A Search Engine Become The Yellow Pages?

I am waiting for the yellow pages to finally get that the Search Engine's are trying to become what the Yellow Pages already do. At what point does all the paid ads like at Yahoo become meaningless? A Big advertisement if you will. Because if it really is about ads, then why not just go full circle to the online Yellow Pages?

Verizon Super Pages has been implementing a pay per click system. I gotta believe the yellow pages have the headstart, if advertisements is where it is all going.

Search Engines in theory, are supposed to be about relevancy.

Type in "Real Estate Listings" and it should give you a page about/with real estate listings.

However, when you take money for ad space, relevancy dissipates as the dollar speaks louder than relevancy. Sure they try to monitor it to some degree but I think you will agree that these engines, as they move toward portals, are becoming big 'ole ads.

The next Google will be one that offers true search, then they will want to move out of their college dorm lifestyle too. So they will look for their payday and the cycle continues.

Just go back in time and look at the tombstones of engines past. Infoseek, Go, Alta Vista, etc. Good ones have even come along with arguably better search than Google. But alas, they were bought off like the Urban Legend of the 200 mile per gallon car patents that were purchased by petro companies.

AskJeeves bought DirecthitandTeoma as an example.

Google clearly is in revenue mode as their search results have gotten worse and worse over the past yr and a half. Type in "city + real estate" and you get mostly directories. Why on earth would they point people from one search medium to another-possibly competitive directory search medium?

Call me conspiratorial but you see more and more people driving prices up on the Google Adwords as the top positions in the natural results are flooded with junk. Me thinks the junky natural results are for a reason.

Smart moves by Google for sure. In the short term anyway.

But what do they care? They are about to be paid. Wall Street Style.