{"id":3226,"date":"2008-06-10T12:19:16","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T19:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3226"},"modified":"2008-06-10T12:19:22","modified_gmt":"2008-06-10T19:19:22","slug":"how-are-you-gonna-keep-em-up-in-your-vertical-real-estate-search-portal-when-the-future-of-home-search-is-horizontal-and-belongs-to-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3226\/how-are-you-gonna-keep-em-up-in-your-vertical-real-estate-search-portal-when-the-future-of-home-search-is-horizontal-and-belongs-to-google\/","title":{"rendered":"How are you gonna keep ’em up in your vertical real estate search portal when the future of home search is horizontal — and Google’s?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do this: Go to Google and search for Phoenix, AZ real estate<\/em><\/a>. We don’t compete for that term — we’re coming in like 34th place — but a lot of people do — like 3.5 million<\/em> hits for the keyword without quotes.<\/p>\n

Here’s what’s interesting:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Out of those 3.5 million search results, Google Base’s Housing Search comes first. That would be true for any other City, ST real estate<\/em> search you might want to run. You don’t need the state if the search is unambiguous.<\/p>\n

Yes, Google Base doesn’t have a lot of listings so far — only about 4.7 million. That’s twice as many as Zillow.com has right now, but it’s still not very many. The data sources are many and disparate, so it’s plausible that there are some duplicates in there, too.<\/p>\n

And, yes, the search interface is horrible. It hasn’t changed much, if at all, in the past year. But who is willing to bet it won’t change in the next year?<\/p>\n

For plain vanilla horizontal search — of practically anything — Google is god — omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent. If you need more than plain vanilla horizontal search, you have to go vertical — but google wants your vertical real estate search to go vertical with them, too.<\/p>\n

There’s more. The upshot of the DOJ\/NAR settlement is that the IDX level of real estate search is likely to become ubiquitous. Right now, Google Base is limping along like Trulia.com and Zillow.com — partnering relationships with a few MLS systems, a few big brokerage chains, a few listings remarkers like flyer and virtual tour vendors, and direct entry by home-sellers and their real estate agents. That’s about to change as MLS systems, either directly or through IDX vendors or VOWs, make every MLS listing available to all takers.<\/p>\n

If you’re Realtor.com, how are you going to hang onto an audience that can get essentially the same results from the same place they get all their other results — from Google.com?<\/p>\n

If you’re Trulia.com — Realtor.com in pastels — what do you have to offer end-users that will be so much more valuable — a year from now Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do this: Go to Google and search for Phoenix, AZ real estate. We don’t compete for that term — we’re coming in like 34th place — but a lot of people do — like 3.5 million hits for the keyword without quotes. Here’s what’s interesting: Out of those 3.5 million search results, Google Base’s Housing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-disintermediation","category-marketing","category-real-estate","category-technology","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10624,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10624\/yelping-googly-trulia-is-google-is-doing-some-last-minute-holiday-shopping\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":0},"title":"Yelping Googly Trulia! Is Google is doing some last minute Holiday shopping?","author":"Brad Coy","date":"December 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"All this week there has been a lot of buzz around the interwebs about Google's possible acquisition of Yelp.com. The local reviews website has been wildly popular almost everywhere I have been in the country and could stand an image makeover in my humble opinion. One big enhancement could be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Innovation"","block_context":{"text":"Innovation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/innovation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"4198814802_07b3bed440_m","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/4198814802_07b3bed440_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6071,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6071\/is-web-technology-squashing-the-little-guy-in-real-estate\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":1},"title":"Is Web Technology Squashing the Little Guy in Real Estate?","author":"Glenn Kelman","date":"December 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"About once a week, someone asks Redfin who built our real estate search site (sometimes they don't ask, they just take). Since we built our site on our own, we can't recommend a development partner, but we can offer advice to other brokers building MLS-powered sites. And our first suggestion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Is Technology Tilting the Playing Field Toward Large Brokers?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.parroom.net\/Images-PSM\/TMPimages\/MIandinfantry.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2982,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2982\/is-managing-your-url-structure-enough-to-achieve-truliamazing-long-tail-search-results-in-your-target-market\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":2},"title":"Is managing your URL structure enough to achieve Truliamazing long tail search results in your target market?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a true fact of BloodhoundBlog life: Trulia.com can be a redheaded stepchild around here. We're always happy to pounce on Redfin.com or to pontificate about Zillow.com, but Trulia most often gets short shrift. It mainly comes across like Realtor.com's younger, smarter, cheaper brother -- and no one with a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11289,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11289\/google-and-the-artifacts-of-inefficiency\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":3},"title":"Google and the artifacts of inefficiency","author":"Tom Johnson","date":"February 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The interwebs are BUZZING about Google Buzz and how benevolent Google co-opted everyone's contact lists from their Gmail accounts. I wonder how many million valid email addresses Google captured in the first 30 minutes of Buzz going live? I try to remember that Google is the same benevolent company that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1115\/true-reform-in-the-real-estate-industry-will-not-result-from-undermining-buyer-representation\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":4},"title":"True reform in the real estate industry will not result from undermining buyer representation","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been sitting on a post from Jeff Corbett, The X-Broker, for a few days. Jeff Argues that Realty.bots will eliminate buyer's agents. This actually ties in with recent announcements that major brokerages will be feeding listings to Realty.bots like Trulia.com and Google base. I get the idea Jeff thinks\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10364,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10364\/google-places-is-a-national-real-estate-search-engine-not-so-much\/","url_meta":{"origin":3226,"position":5},"title":"“Google Places” is a “National Real Estate Search Engine”? Not so much.","author":"John Rowles","date":"November 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"...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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"google_lbc","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/google_lbc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}