Aug. 11, 2009 - Google versus the Property Portal |
"If I was a gambling man, I’d bet on Google disrupting a significant number of property portal markets over the medium term. Brand building is a portal’s only defence and it will be the number two, three and four players who suffer most. Will it benefit agents? Probably, in some cases by putting downward pressure on portal prices but inflation in Adwords prices could cancel this out."
In today's blog from the WAV group http://waves.wavgroup.com/google-launches-real-estate-search-portal Victor Lund describes Google's announcement of a real estate search portal. And Global Edge's blog (reprinted by Inman) trumpets "Property Portals-Expect Casualties".
Speaking as a consumer, the Google search portal for real estate is pretty slick. A lot of the property data infrastructure is already in place from Google Maps, and I found that even for my isolated location in Northern Michigan there's a highly populated data base due to an existing feed from the MLS through the ListHub product. In addition, property owners can add their own listings if they don't have an agreement with a real estate broker--thus increasing the potential listing search for consumers.
Read Google's instructions for agents and brokers http://maps.google.com/help/maps/realestate/data_provider_faq.html. The instructions are elegantly simple and designed to encourage participation. The bare bones, welcoming design is in itself one of the greatest challenges to many of the real estate search portals in existence today, particularly those affiliated with multiple listing services (the Google real estate search is NOT an MLS, as it clearly states). But the Google real estate search is inclusive, self-correcting, interactive, and free--conditions which will be certain to be attractive to consumers and real estate professionals.
If you have a property search portal on your company, franchise, or association web site, scurry on over to http://maps.google.com/realestate and have a look. There are a lot of lessons to be learned there.
(repost)
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View more entries tagged with: Realtor, Google, Portal, Mls |
Aug. 11, 2009 - RE: Google versus the Property Portal |
| Posted by Stephen Graham |
This technology has good potential, particularly the street view feature.
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Aug. 12, 2009 - RE: Google versus the Property Portal |
| Posted by Ronan D |
Simon Baker makes the argument that if Google drives significant traffic to Google real estate then consumers no longer need to stick around and click on the paid search results. On one level this is true. Adding Google real estate to the top of the search results would attract more clicks than most portal or agent sites as it’s a strong brand, leaving less people to click on the paid search results.
However, Google is already promoting brands more heavily, which by the same argument is against its commercial interests. It’s a dilemma it faces all the time. The more relevant it makes its organic search, the quicker users find what they want and the less likely they are to click on paid results.
Google gets around this by tweaking when and where it shows you paid search results. Notice that you are often shown a number of paid search adverts at the top of the page for high volume searches such as Property in Spain.
What really improves the economics of Adwords is competition and launching Google real estate will increase it.
* Adding Google real estate to the organic search results will push one player out of the results and a percentage of these sites will end up paying for traffic on Adwords
* A proportion of agents who sign up for free real estate listings on Google Base will not have Adwords accounts and will end up creating an account and bidding; creating more competition for keywords and therefore higher prices and revenues for Google.
If you run an auction, what you want is a large number of motivated sellers in each geographical market. Local agents will always pay more than portals to appear in their own towns and regions because it matters more, both commercially and psychologically. Google’s move into real estate helps create more motivated local bidders for Adwords without using any cash till payday.
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Aug. 13, 2009 - RE: Google versus the Property Portal |
| Posted by Judith Lindenau |
Good analysis, thanks. I guess I was thinking more of the impact that this will have on MLS operations. As more and more agents value the MLS as an ad cooperative, rather than a business infrastructure, will the availability of free advertising (without rules, fines and geographical limitations) lesson the desireability of an MLS? I know we like to value the desireability of offers of compensation and cooperation, but at what point (for the member at large) do the restrictions and costs of the MLS outweigh the benefits? And will emerging technologies allow us to offer terms of cooperation without joining an MLS?
Just thinking. |
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A behind the scenes look at organized real estate--what works in an association, what doesn't, and what a long time AE sees as challenges facing the industry from the viewpoint of its professional organization.
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