Google Thinks Your IDX Site Sucks

by John Rowles

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

There are plenty of places to go if this is your first time hearing about “Panda”, but the general idea is that Google has set out to target what it considers to be “low quality” content of the sort generally propagated by link farms, scrapers, and the eHows of the Web.

Any time Google makes a major change to their algorithm there are winners and losers, and you can count on the losers to raise a fuss about Google goring their ox. This time, Google has come back and said, in effect, “If you don’t publish crap you have nothing to worry about”.

The problem for those of us who currently rely on IDX to power listing search on broker and agent Web sites is that IDX content is, by Google’s definition, crap — and the crap has come home to roost: Some of our sites are down 30% since Panda hit.

This, finally, should force some brokers to address the issue of content quality and strategy, because the alternative is to pay through the nose for inquiries that Google would send, for free, if brokers understood what Google wants.

Here are some of the questions Google suggests site owners ask themselves about their content. I’ve picked a few that speak directly to real estate listings and IDX (the whole list is here). Every place that Google had the words “article”, “content”, or “page” I’ve inserted the real estate specific terminology {in brackets}:

• Does the {listing detail page} provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
  Google is focused on sending its users to the creators of original content, because that is generally the best user experience. Since the listing agent is the only one who actually knows anything about the listing, that is doubly true for real estate.The irony is that all listing content — the text, the pictures, the video — is original content right up until the moment it goes into IDX and listing syndication. As soon as that happens, Google cannot distinguish the listing creator’s domain from the rest, and you have just given up the value of being the creator, which is basically to guarantee yourself #1 position in a Google search for your listing.
• Does the {listing detail page} provide substantial value when compared to other {listing detail pages} in search results?
  Nope, everyone is using the exact same content.
• How much quality control is done on {the listing} content?
  To paraphrase a former president, that depends on what your definition of “quality control” is.
• Was the {the listing} edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  90% of the time, there is no editing, no attempt to follow basic rules of grammar, and correct spelling is optional, especially if an abbreviation or acronym (that no homebuyer would search for) can be used instead of a real word.
• Are the {listing detail pages} produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
  As it might be put by an agent according to the rule of thumb above, ROTFLMAO.
• Does this {listing} provide a complete or comprehensive description of the {property}?
  How many IDX listings for a $250,000 home have you seen that have more content than the product page for a $25 book on Amazon?
• Does this {listing} contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  You mean beyond filling out the MLS form? God forbid.
• Would you expect to see this {listing} in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
  Yes, The Darwin Awards.
• Are the {listings} short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
  I would argue that listing pages loaded with facts like “Garage Y/N=Y” but lacking any context fit this description.
• Are the {listings} mass-produced…or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
  Yup.

Let’s put this in perspective: Most people move locally. The median distance people move is 12 miles after living in the same place for a median term of 9 years (sellers of single family, detached homes in 2010 according to NAR). Therefore, most people know what streets, neighborhoods, developments, and very often, which specific house they are interested in.

That means real estate is, and always will be, fundamentally a search-driven business.

Most users naturally know the keywords that describe the properties they might want to see and have little patience for search forms that want them to pick towns out of a drop down list, what property type they want, and how many bathrooms.

The easiest, most direct way to get the listing information they want is to use the same search engine they use for everything else, so that is what they do.

Google controls somewhere between 65 and 70% of what comScore calls “explicit core searches”, ergo, most real estate searches start on Google.

When those homebuyers google a listing, Google (or Yahoo, or Bing) returns a list of domains that often does not include the listing broker, but they have the listing broker’s content and are most likely associating it with another broker’s agent unless they are getting paid not to.

The solution is simple in theory and I’ve advocated it before: Send basic, low-quality content to IDX and syndication and create rich, high quality content that you reserve for your own domain or a domain that is specific to the listing.

The problem is getting agents to execute that theory: I’ve lost a lot of them with the “create rich, high quality content” part because that sounds like work (because it is).

But maybe now that Google is systematically pushing the last of the local broker domains off of Page 1 while national domains like Realtor.com and Century21.com move up, brokers will finally wake up and either demand quality content or pay someone to create it.

Or they can just give up and pay to get the same inquires that Google would send them, for free, from the sites that have the heft (which now seems to mean branding) that enables them to use the same old low quality crap listing content to beat them in Google — and keep those MLS, syndicator and franchise bills coming.