{"id":877,"date":"2007-01-09T15:25:17","date_gmt":"2007-01-09T22:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=877"},"modified":"2007-04-01T09:05:57","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T16:05:57","slug":"feed-the-starving-realtybot-zillowcom-is-underwhelming-so-far-as-a-national-property-listings-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/877\/feed-the-starving-realtybot-zillowcom-is-underwhelming-so-far-as-a-national-property-listings-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Feed the starving Realty.bot: Zillow.com is underwhelming, so far, as a National Property Listings Service . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I have to back off — for now, at least — from my earlier expectations for Zillow.com as an incipient National Property Listings Service<\/a>. To this date, anyway, Zillow’s appeal to sellers and listing agents has been underwhelming, at best. As I write, there are 19,250 homes listed for sale on the system. An additional 10,381 are listed under the “Make Me Move” option. By contrast, at the time that Zillow.com released these changes to its software, Trulia.com announced that it had achieved one million on-line listings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At that time, I had written Trulia and other on-line listings aggregators off as dinosaurs, and I still believe this is true. But if Zillow.com represents the coming of the mammals, the first mammalian species to have evolved must have been the sloth.<\/p>\n

What’s the problem?<\/p>\n

No XML feed.<\/p>\n

When these software upgrades were made, Galen Ward speculated that Zillow had skipped the feed to capture agents’ eyeballs for its advertising<\/a>. If this is the actual reason Zillow elected not to permit listing by XML feed — as is done by the other Realty.bot listings aggregators — then the strategy has backfired.<\/p>\n

Whatever Zillow’s reason not to have a feed, that reason is wrong. In making these changes, Zillow.com voluntarily surrendered the fearsome mojo of it’s Delphic Automated Valuation Method. Overnight, it transformed itself from every Realtor’s favorite bette noir<\/i> to… just another listings bot. And as exciting as it might be as a listings bot, it’s but one more of what are already<\/i> too many listings bots — and the only one of the bunch that can’t<\/i> be fed from PostLets<\/a> or vFlyer<\/a> or one of many proprietary Realtor web site vendors.<\/p>\n

That is: It went from being potentially threatening to Realtors but fundamentally useless to potentially useful but fundamentally a pain in the ass to Realtors.<\/p>\n

This turns out not to have been an improvement, especially as Zillow.com prepares to roll out an advertising product targeted to Realtors<\/a>. Zillow.com has always been able to deliver potential sellers — even as it delivers wildly inaccurate Zestimates to them. But without a significant number of homes listed for sale, Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I have to back off — for now, at least — from my earlier expectations for Zillow.com as an incipient National Property Listings Service. To this date, anyway, Zillow’s appeal to sellers and listing agents has been underwhelming, at best. As I write, there are 19,250 homes listed for sale on the system. […]<\/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":[3,4,6,5,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-disintermediation","category-marketing","category-real-estate","category-zillowcom","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":195,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/195\/pinocchio-wept-the-map-is-never-the-territory-so-even-a-much-much-better-zillowcom-clone-would-not-be-able-to-evaluate-real-property\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":0},"title":"Pinocchio wept: The map is never the territory, so even a much, much better Zillow.com clone would not be able to evaluate real property . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"David G. from Zillow.com replied to my post yesterday which argues that Zillow.com Zestimates are bunk, which I had proved to my own satisfaction in an earlier post. I'm revisiting the topic -- to everyone's delight, no doubt -- because I want to drive the point home, and because I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2801,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2801\/zillowcom-makes-its-first-mls-wide-feed-agreement-and-in-the-process-disintermediates-its-first-idx-cartel\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":1},"title":"Zillow.com makes its first MLS-wide feed agreement and, in the process, disintermediates its first IDX cartel","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the PR, which the vendor cheerleaders will have reported:*Leading real estate Web site Zillow.com and MLS Property Information Network today announced a partnership to feed listings from the New England area MLS to Zillow.com on a daily basis. This partnership initiates the first participation at the MLS level in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2482,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2482\/finally-i-have-something-to-blog-about-zillow\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":2},"title":"Finally – I Have Something To Blog About Zillow","author":"Doug Quance","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"On Hiatus From A Two-Year Zillow Blogging Embargo I have never blogged about Zillow... or Redfin, for that matter. I've always felt that they got more free press than they deserved - not that they don't deserve some free press, 'cause they do - and as such, there wasn't anything\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/134\/debunking-zillowcom\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":3},"title":"Debunking Zillow.com . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Zillow.com got itself a ton of new venture capital yesterday, so today seems like a fine time to deconstruct its praxis. When Zillow was brand new, Catherine Reagor, the dippy local real estate reporter for the Arizona Republic wrote:Want a reality check? Go to zillow.com, a new Web site with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":754,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/754\/zillowcom-versus-realtorcom-nothing-grows-in-the-shade-of-great-tree\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":4},"title":"Zillow.com versus Realtor.com: Nothing grows in the shade of great tree . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I think part of the problem, in understanding the radical nature of what Zillow.com did this week, is that we are conflating unlike things. As an example, when I speak of a National MLS, I am not talking about local MLS systems. For one thing, the sine qua non purpose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1257,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1257\/greg-peeing-on-the-tree-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":877,"position":5},"title":"Planet Zillow.com: Burgeoning Realty.bot grows, potentially, to become a self-sustaining residential real estate eco-system","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the news. We'll circle back for details and implications. Zillow.com, the national Realty.bot growing out of the popular automated home valuation service, is releasing a new version of its popular web-based real estate portal tonight. Dubbed Zillow 5, the new functionality comes in three broad categories:Any user of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","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=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}