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Author: John Rowles (page 2 of 4)

IDX Search Entrepreneur

November 20, 2009

“Google Places” is a “National Real Estate Search Engine”? Not so much.

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…at least not yet.

On Sept 24th when the Google Blog announcement of Google Places was posted, there was no mention of Place Pages for Real Estate:

“A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.”

Notice they didn’t say “addresses” or “real estate listings”, but today over on SearchEngineLand,  there is a post by Matt Mcgee titled Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine which features a “Real Estate Listing Place Page”, and several other outlets have picked up on it.

The Place Page that Matt uses as an example does indeed show that there are now Place Pages for listings that Google knows about via Google Base.

A closer look reveals that, at least at this point, this isn’t very different from what Google has done up to now.

The content on the example that Matt from SearchEngineLand used consists of photos from PrudentialProperties.com and redundant basic information from that site and two others.

As Real Estate listing pages go, its a hodgepodge with little added value, such as an AVM, or local market info, that you would find on a good IDX site for the same listing. Even Realtor.com’s basic listing page is better. If you want that detailed information Google, as it always has, provides the links back to the original real estate sites.

That makes this an extension of Google organic results, nothing more.

As a stand-alone listing detail page as opposed to the beefed-up search result page that it is, this “Real Estate Listing Place Page” is pretty half-assed by Google’s standards, which may be why Place Pages for real estate are currently hard to find.

I tried entering the address from Matt’s example in Google Maps, without putting the /realestate after the address, and was not offered the “more info” link that leads to the Place Page, even though we know it exists.

Then I tried entering the address on my new Droid (yes it Read more

November 17, 2009

As RPR hits, NAR (finally) Concedes that Google isn’t a “Scraper”

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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get used to it

I attended the NAR convention in San Diego over the weekend and this banner caught my eye. It just seemed oddly Orwellian to me, as if NAR were subliminally planting the idea. As it turns out, that was not far from the truth.

The IDX rules have been updated to explicitly allow indexing by search engines, defeating the Indianapolis BoR’s attempt to use the old rules to prevent brokers and agents from using IDX data in SEO.

This time around, apparently, there was no parliamentary chicanery to delay the obvious. On the other hand, they did add an explicit opt-out for sellers who don’t want AVMs or third-party comments, or links to that content, associated with their listings.

It would be funny if it weren’t so frustrating: Obviously, they are aware that there is this technology called a “search engine” that makes it easy to find stuff, because they just endorsed a rule that acknowledges what the rest of the world figured out in 1995 — that search engines are useful.

Then they pivot and give sellers the right to censor information about their listings, but only on sites that use IDX data, meaning that those AVMs and third party comments are just a quick search away on sites like Zillow and Trulia. All this does is give people a reason to leave the broker or agent’s site to go and find the information they want on a site that is not bound by these idiotic rules.

Not that it will matter for much longer. With RPR, NAR itself is getting into the AVM game and, if you believe the nightmares of some local MLS directors, taking a concrete step towards a national MLS. If the reality matches the spin, they may be able to improve AVMs by adding information contributed by the membership, an idea they call the “Realtor Valuation Model”.

What’s missing is MLS data, at least for now. Done right, blending current and historical MLS data in with all the public data and combining that with an ability for brokers and agents to add their 2 cents would produce a much more accurate, and Read more

August 20, 2009

Real Estate Branding, Post-Google

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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Do real estate brands mean anything to homebuyers post-Google?

When the MLS was printed in a binder that brokers hid under their desks and consumers had to shop for an agent first, brand mattered to buyers.

Now, buyers come armed with a list of properties that are relevant to them and each property comes with an agent, a broker, and a brand attached.

Consumers don’t need agents in order to shop, so relevance trumps brand on the buyer side. That has huge implications if you are a listing broker or agent.

I manage B2C eCommerce sites outside of real estate.  It is apparent to me that, until the moment a consumer contacts an agent and becomes a “homebuyer”,  listing brokers and agents are B2C eCommerce merchants, and your product is the content you develop around your listings.

Listing content = product. Think about it:  Merchandising is about tapping into learned behavior. Most homebuyers are in the market once every 10 years, so for the last 10 years today’s homebuyers have been buyng books on Amazon and shoes on Zappos.

In their lizard brains, when they are on a real estate site looking at properties they are just on another eCommerce site looking at a product.

But brokers and agents devalue their product by giving all of  it away, for free, in the name of advertising.

There are many best practices from the wider world of B2C eCommerce that can be applied to real estate, and it starts with understanding how to develop product content and how that differs from advertising.  Plus, using an eCommerce framework to understand and influence consumer behavior is the kind of thing you can point to where brand does still matter — with sellers.

Sellers still shop for an agent or a broker. Sellers may feel that one local broker can market their property better than other brokers. Feelings can be influenced by branding, and branding works best when it is backed up by real differentiation.

Showing sellers that you understand how to package their listing as an eCommerce product that is distinct from the adverting that you use to get interested buyers to that product/property detail Read more

July 29, 2009

BingHoo

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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It’s official, Yahoo, the original search brand, is outsourcing its search function to Microsoft. I don’t think either Microsoft or Yahoo had a choice. It’s a shotgun marriage.

Those work out all the time, right?

Coming out with something that is noticeably better than Google’s Search experience is the only way anyone will  take significant search audience share from them, because despite all the hype around Tweets and FB, Search is still the fundamental App that makes the Web useful and people need a real reason to switch from what they like and are used to.

Failing that (as Microsoft  has with every incremental redesign of their search offering, including Bing), Redmond probably figured why not buy a solid, if distant, second place?

Yahoo knows how this works: A combination of loyalty and laziness is the only reason they still have enough users that Microsoft is even interested in this deal.

So what does this mean for your SEM efforts?

As Wired points out in a good take on this deal, “…by capturing one opposing army, (Microsoft) dramatically simplifies the battle lines and creates a two-sided conflict.”

Google knows how to hit Microsoft where it hurts, most recently by forcing Microsoft to sacrifice its cash cow, Office, by making it available on line next year to counter Google Docs. So far, Microsoft has not been able to land an equally  solid punch on Google.

That has to make Steve Ballmer’s forehead all purple with the veins popping out, like the evil aliens in the original Star Trek pilot. I don’t think I could work for Ballmer. I first saw those aliens when I was like 6, and I still have nightmares about them.

ballmer-talosian

….but I digress…

One way Steve could finally get some would be to introduce serious competition in contextual text ads, the Web advertising form that Google invented and the only ad model that works on the Web (Exhibit A: They made Google $5.5 Billion last Qtr.).

Real competition from Microsoft in the form of lower costs per click could drive Adword prices down, which all by itself does nothing to take overall search audience share from Google, but Read more

July 15, 2009

Just had to share this….

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I was doing some research today and came across an article on Realtor.org from 12-01-2006 about The Top 25 Most Influential Thought Leaders in Real Estate. After a list of 25  builders of the status quo, they had a runner-up list of 15.

Robert Schiller made that list, here is the “why”:

Got big media coverage equating rising real estate prices with the tech bubble, but we haven’t heard the pop yet.

Robert Shiller scored instant media celebrity when his 2000 book, Irrational Exuberance, predicted the tech bubble’s explosion just weeks before the fact. Four years later, when he tried to apply the same principles to the real estate boom, he found out that all investments don’t behave alike. Shiller contended that rising home prices weren’t based in the fundamentals of population growth and supply and demand; they were bubbles, destined to pop.

To the contrary, NAR economists predicted that market slowdowns would largely be gradual—a trend that’s playing out today. Shiller’s failed bubble scenario demonstrates that sometimes even smart guys get it wrong.

Yeah, and sometimes economists who work for the status quo get it SO wrong it makes you laugh out loud.

By December 2006, wasn’t it already becoming clear that sub-prime was a the tip of the iceberg? The Kool Aid must have been strong at Realtor.org for them to tempt fate so blatantly.

July 13, 2009

Redfin Turns a profit

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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Mention “Redfin” to many real estate traditionalistas and among the “Yeah, buts…”  the closer is usually, “Yeah, but they aren’t profitable.”

That is no longer the case.

Congratulations, Glenn.

As we ponder the future of this business,  the impact that technology is having and will have, and why it is taking so long to see real change, Redfin’s success proves that, sooner or later, money talks and bullshit lets its license expire.

June 5, 2009

“Search Overload” = Toenail Fungus

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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Bing! I’ve decided that following big pharma’s TV marketing playbook to launch a search engine that is supposed to compete with Google is an idea so dumb, it could only have been approved by whoever thought that Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates walking around a mall would make people think Vista doesn’t suck.

Apparently, there is a condition called “search overload”. I didn’t know it existed until I saw the Bing commercial last night, but now I think I might have it.

According to the commercial, symptoms of “search overload” include feelings of being blind-sided by what’s happened to the economy, high gas prices,  and anger that Google didn’t tell me that housing prices don’t always go up.

I feel compelled to ask my doctor about Bing.

You see, unlike regular search engines, Bing doesn’t just give you what you ask for, it helps you to make decisions – it’s a “decision engine” (uh-huh)  and using it to make decisions for you makes your life better.

(Bing isn’t for everyone: People who know how to use a search engine may actually feel themselves getting dumber while using Bing.

If you thought the Bing ad was the funniest thing on Conan O’Brien’s Late Show last night, be sure to mention that to your Doctor when you ask about Bing.

If blaming Google for the economic collapse makes sense to you for more than 4 hours, proceed to the nearest Verizon store and purchase a Windows Mobile device.)

May 22, 2009

Is NAR Criminal or Clueless? What difference does it make?

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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I  read the give and take between Greg and Mike DiMella (full disclosure, Mike is a client) with interest, because I respect them both, and it is always interesting when smart people agree to disagree and do so with civility and eloquence and without resorting to the ad hominem.

When that single MIBOR director derailed a policy change that went against them, even though it was unanimously approved by the NAR’s own technology committee, we were all left to discern a motive.

Was this the result of a long-standing “criminal conspiracy” (Greg)? Is this an attempt by some local MLSs, who see Google’s handwriting on the wall, to remian relevant by competing with their own members (me)? Or was this a consequence of the realities of trying to pull coherent policy from the collective mind of a large membership organization in a timely fashion (Mike)?

Its an interesting question, but the answer, it seems to me,  is irrelevant in the discussion of what to do next.

One thing we all agree on, I think, is that the MIBOR director used his knowledge of  NAR parliamentary procedure to work the system to MIBOR’s benefit and to the detriment of brokers and agents.

The prima facie evidence is that, at least for the next 6 months, Paula Henry is still being forced to dis-allow Google from indexing her site.

That means the damage is real.

Yes, it is contained to Indianapolis for the moment, but will it stay that way? My guess is that MIBOR will be huddling with other MLSs who share their control fetish over the next 6 months, and our friend the objecting director from Indianapolis will have a quorum come November.

Now that NAR has proven itself to be subject to the whims of directors who are nostalgic for a paper-bound MLS that brokers kept behind their desks, modern brokers and agents need to aggressively defend their own interests because, clearly, the organization that is supposed to do that is not.

I see signs of this happening now, with people getting fed up enough to get involved with their boards at the local level, but is that enough?

Perhaps Read more

May 17, 2009

NAR Board Sends IDX Policy Back to Committee

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/2009/05/16/nars-idx-rule-changes-need-more-study/

For a few hours there, it looked like the NAR BOD was actually going to do the right thing.

Then, the guy from Indianapolis stands up and says, in effect, “Instead of doing the right thing, lets send this back to the rules committee so NAR members can enjoy another 6 months of uncertainty.”

It was apparently a close vote, but in the end, the decision was not to decide.

As the band Rush put it in “Free Will” (not “Tom Sawyer” — thanks, Tony) — If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.

Its interesting that the motion to send a rule that would have protected a broker’s right to use IDX data for SEO purposes back to committee was made by a director of the board that tried to label Google a “scraper” in the first place.

Why would he do that and why would the board go along with it?

It comes down to the question I’ve already asked: It’s either a stunning degree of cluelessness, or it is a deliberate attempt to find a way to hobble IDX to the benefit of NAR (Realtor.com) and to the benefit of the local boards who see being a consumer Web destination for local listings as a rasion d’etre.

If its the latter (and I suspect that it is), it shows that NAR and some MLS boards see themselves as being in competition with their own membership, who, by the way, provide the frolicking listing content in question in the first place!

The MLS ostensibly exists to organize the market. Brokers who are stuck in MLSs that have decided to become competitors under the guise of a “member service”  need  re-assert themselves and remind their boards who works for who.

Here’s a metaphor that even a NAR Director can understand: If the role of MLSs is to market its member’s listings, then why didn’t MLSs compete with brokers for column inches in newspaper real estate sections, or publish their own glossy magazine-style publications full of (outdated) MLS listings?

Here’s a modest proposal for a motion for the NAR BOD to consider: I move that all local Read more

May 14, 2009

NAR Backs Off Labeling Google a “Scraper”

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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I’m basing this on a flurry of tweets out of NAR Mid Year, but it looks like the NAR rules committee came to its senses.

I await the actual verbiage. It will be interesting to see what twisted hedge they come up with to distinguish an “indexer” from a “scraper”.

Still, the question remains: Was the original decision to back MIBOR a deliberate attempt to see if they could rally the Luddites to hobble IDX?

Or was it just plain vanilla cluelessness?

Either way, it begs the even bigger question that was asked hundreds of times on blog posts over the last week: What are NAR members paying for?

UPDATE: Not so fast. See Malok’s comment below. It’s not a done deal, apparently, and the twits are silent.

May 11, 2009

NAR + IDX = FUBAR Rules

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Thanks to Ryan’s earlier post, I have spent the morning digging into the NAR’s attempt to label the Google Search Engine a “scraper”.

Clearly, the intent is to stifle Realtor.com’s competition.

There is no other explanation for a rule that specifically targets SEO by dictating that we cannot put the content that consumers search for (addresses, MLS#s, the names of developments, etc.) in the places that Google looks for it (page titles, URLs, etc.), while Realtor.com continues to publish that same information in those same places.

How stupid is this? Let me count the ways:

  1. It’s legally stupid: The DOJ went after the NAR during the BUSH years and decided to settle last year. Do they really think the Obama DOJ is going to ignore such a blatantly anti-competitive (not to mention technologically indefensible) rule?Does the NAR really think the Obama DOJ would side with a cartel over the consumer when even the Bushies were like, “You know, we normally stick it to the little guy in favor of Republican donors but you guys are just ridiculous.”?

    The instant one of the boards we deal with tries to enforce this rule, I will be filing a compliant with both the FTC and the DOJ and mine will be one of many.

  2. The timing is stupid: Obviously, Real Estate is at the center of the economic storm that all Americans are weathering right now. Real Estate professionals are already distrusted (one study in the UK found that less than 10% of Britons trusted Real Estate agents).Such a ham-handed attempt to control information for their own economic benefit just feeds this perception, making the NAR (and, by extension, Realtors) an even more attractive target for the Obama DOJ.
  3. Trying to “protect” content is stupid: Ask the Recording Industry or newspapers how well clinging to an obsolete business model by “protecting” content works.Information wants to be free in a networked society. The Internet itself was built to re-route traffic around roadblocks, like a city that used to have phone lines getting nuked by the Russians.

    As roadblocks go, whatever the NAR throws up will be a joke. Ryan has already demonstrated that Read more

March 31, 2009

Announcing RealSearchUSA.com

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No, that’s not me with The Hoff and a Google Search Appliance, that’s Google’s UK Sales Mgr.		 RealSearchUSA.com will be a network of Independent brokers connected by a unique function – a natural language Real Estate search engine. Our goal is to create a true consumer benefit: A Google-inspired (and powered) natural language search experience that leads to a good, local independent broker.

The success of our network will be determined by Word of Mouth (or, more accurately, Word of Email, Word of Facebook, Word of IM, Word of Twitter…).

Here’s the thing about that: We, as the technical force behind the network, have no control over what happens after we hand a homebuyer off to a broker, but that is the part of the experience that will drive WOM for both the broker and the network.

Since we work on an exclusive territory basis to preserve the competitive advantage of a unique user experience, we need to be sure that we are working with the right brokers if we want to see that WOM, so we are being selective about who we hook up to the network.

That’s why I am announcing RealSearchUSA here on BHB: If we can network Web-smart brokers together at the Search Result level, not only would we be off to a good start, we would be taking concrete steps to strengthen the independent brokers who are poised to shake up this industry whenever a recovery gets going.

In most cases, we can place a Google-powered Real Estate Search box on an existing Web site, as we have done here for Mike DiMella at Charlesgate Realty in Boston. It is a network based on an upgrade to Search, which is the function that most Real Estate Web site users are looking for in the first place, but here is the kicker: This search function will also make you a node on a network of independent brokers like you.

Allow me to explain the node thing:

We build Real Estate Search Engines using Google’s Enterprise technology. Our goal is to provide the best Real Estate Search experience for people who like the way Read more

March 27, 2009

Wheaten Terrier Picks Agent for $150m Listing

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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How long before the “Real Estate Coaches” are advising their clients to walk into listing appointments with a pocketful of snausages?

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The widow of producer Aaron Spelling is placing “The Manor” in the exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood on the market for a jaw-dropping $150 million, making it by far the most expensive home for sale in the U.S…

…Candy Spelling’s late husband produced hit shows such as “Charlie’s Angels,””Dynasty” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” He died in 2006…

…Candy Spelling told The Associated Press that she let her dog Madison, a soft-coated Wheaten Terrier, help pick out the best real estate agent for the task. She had her security bring the dog into the room every time she met one of the candidate agents and watched how the dog reacted. If Madison didn’t like them, Spelling crossed them off the list.

Prospective buyers won’t have to worry about passing such scrutiny, Spelling jokes.

“Not at all,” she says.

Too bad her late husband didn’t have the dog sniff the shows he produced.

What a laugh Candy is having at our expense. She thinks all agents are the same. One of them is going to get let’s say a cool 1% of $150m ($1.5m). That’s probably Madison’s yearly grooming budget, so let’s let the dog decide. What a lark.

I’m not sure what the take-away is, here.

Part of me realizes the problem isn’t that Candy let her dog pick her Real Estate agent. The problem is that Candy, widow of Aaron, mother of Tori, knew it would play.

If she thought for a second that the general public or prospective buyers would think she was an idiot for letting the dog pick a Realtor, she wouldn’t be laughing about it with the AP. It’s not that she made the joke, its that she knew the audience would get it.

On the other hand, it’s Friday. If you have spent the week trying to be the best agent or broker you can be, trying to build your business in this market, and then you find out that a dog decided who got the most expensive listing in the US, it Read more

March 24, 2009

Inquiry Bump?

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Yesterday, after the housing data came out, there was spike in the number of web-generated inquiries we see.

I’d have to take the time to aggregate the data across all clients to put a number on it, but just looking at the inbox we use to keep an eye on “Ask our Agent” questions, the jump was significant.

Obviously, people are influenced by the news. I could look at Q4 traffic graph from last year and show you the day Lehman went down, but I don’t remember a good news bump like this in the five years I’ve been managing Real Estate Web sites.

Are you seeing the same thing?

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