I think its the sort of idea that could actually work, and in a massive way if executed correctly. Your only mistake is actually listening to what agents think.

A free, massive directory of virtually every Australian property for sale would be a tool for the user – not the agent. If you could deliver such a free tool, that was faster and easier to use, with more listings and accurate info: Every ‘user’ in the country would embrace it overnight – just as they did Google.

In which case – who cares ‘how agents tick’? I mean really?

Do you think the guys who invented Napster cared how record executives ‘tic’? Or YouTube creator’s cared how TV network executives ‘tic’?

They quietly focused on filling the gaping holes left in the needs of the end-user by those ‘media executives’ (who were obliviously ‘ticking away’ with each other for the last decade), then sat back as those loudly ticking execs were wiped-out overnight.

If agents get too caught up in their own necessity and forget that at the end of the day, they exist exclusively to assist the Buyer and Seller – they’ll go the exact same way.

And that is precisely the reason I will never, ever, ever, buy from an agent who lists POA. They’re more interested in misleading me, the user, than giving me facts I’m seeking.

Just my 2 cents.

Nick

This question is directed not just at your business, but at anyone who is getting, or considering amalgamating data from multiple sites.

Is the information gathering process you are using in confilct, in any way, with Australian Copyright laws, such as the “Copyright Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Bill” ?

I ask, as from what little I know about copyright protection, only 10% of published material can be reproduced without permission, in Australia.

The reason google and other search engines can data from sites is that they are referencing it, not reproducing it.
I am sure it has been raised here in a few formats, but I will once agian point out that a majority of the information that appears on search engines does so with the knowledge and permission of the site’s content owners.

Mike, please be aware, I am not trying to put down your new business idea. I think it has merit and look forward to seeing it live.

Thanks I will let you know when it is ready to look at and invite you to view it before it is live.

Also I would be happy to make changes based on yours and the other forum members feedback.

In reality Google indexes from both REA, Domain and your site and all the other agents sites.

Your site ranks extremely well for Mosman/Neutral Bay searches but in other stuff (like property addresses) they make a call in the algorithm that gives one site a better ranking over another for given search terms your site is good and your sales record is amazing, however due to a variety of reasons they would rank the two portals higher.

Anyway maybe once we get this going I can give you a live demo on the notebook at the Oaks or the Blues Point Hotel (Im only just a few suburbs away from you guys)

Thanks

Mike

PS if you want to beat Napier properties in ranking for the same addresses have a look at the folllowing for your site

1. Change Image name to propertynumber-street-suburb
2. Change URL to propertynumber-street-suburb
3. Change Title to propertynumber-street-suburb
4. Include propertynumber-street-suburb in page meta tags.

This is what Nappier is doing and its probably why they are ranking higher for the same/similar addresses.

I really enjoyed reading your responses and quite possibly you do have something special with beta – let’s hope that it is unique and breaks the mold.

I take your point with Google and their methodology of collecting data. In the majority of instances I believe they lift the pages from REA and Domain, both would never challenge as it delivers them increased traffic. Makes one ponder how much traffic is delivered via Google, as compared to typing in their individual URL’s to search properties.

We sign contracts with both portals that they can use all our material so it is actually the portals in my understanding that are in breach. However, given that Google is bigger than both portals combined I can’t see the agents contacting Slater & Gordon.

With regard to allowing outside advertsisers to promote their businesses on our website I would never allow that to happen. We also have a separate online business “Virtual Realty News” which is a weekly ezine (starts again this week) that goes each week to just over 8,000 subscribers and 43 countries. Thus far it has delivered us over $550,000,000 in sales to subscribers. Yes, I have also rejected outside advertising on this too.

I wish you well with your experiment and shall watch with interest and monitor your progress. Thanks for explaining how your crawl the websites and interesting method.

Good luck

Robert

Guess we will just have to look at the beta to see if it : breaks the mold of the existing portals.

I take your point about the copyright, my point is this. Google et al has been doing this for ever and none of you are complaining.

They have been collecting this data since you opened your site so they can make money out of showing ads next to it.

I would be interested in both Elizabeth and Roberts opinion of how this is any different?

This post started as Peter found a mock up of a google search property engine.

Its pretty easy to give the little startup a workout (I guess Serg and Larry are not responding to your posts) , but no one is going after Google in this discussion. They already have all your properties and images

Have a look at

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rls=GGIC,GGIC:1970–2,GGIC:en&q=4%20Warringah%20Lane%2C&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:HK9KxGQ1abUJ:www.rwm.com.au/new_propview.php%3Fview%3D28173+4+Warringah+Lane,&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5

None of you seems to be acting on this. I dont hear the agents of Australia raising a class action against Google or Yahoo.

And their data in your case is 2 weeks out of date. The silence about them doing this is deafening.

Yet, one day they will do exactly what I am proposing and you all seem to accept this. Why?

Someone is going to do what Im proposing, Google, Yahoo, NineMSN a new startup.

I guess we will all have to walk down this path and see where it leads us.

If it ends up in court so be it, but if an agent has allowed Google et al to do what it does for so long without complaint and the agent still thinks this is ok, how do you justify that its not ok for one small player.

You and I just want to sell stuff, you properties, me advertising, I think we will just get on with it. Could be wrong. Time will tell.

Robert said “My initial post is that once the property exchanges we remove it from REA, Domain and RWM.”

If you update RWM (nice site too) , we can check it regularly, I can set how often we crawl by site, our crawler is designed to realise when a property has disappeared from your site.

It keeps a track, if the record isnt there anymore, it marks it as non current and it doesnt appear in the for sale listings. Again all of this is a function of bandwidth and computing power nothing to do with how quickly we can do it.

I will show you what we have in a few weeks, I guess the collective market both Agents and Buyers will tell us if they like it and it will either thrive or die.

If it thrives I expect legal action from someone. Most likely a major shareholder in REA.

My view is, its still an experiment, its yet to be proven, but one that added another 11000 properties in the last 12 hours and that is just with only a few agents in the test database on a test server.

Glad this has started a passionate debate, I would be disappointed if no one cared.

Thanks

Mike

Mike Says:

January 26th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Hi Robert

Thanks, for your feedback, assuming you take the listing off your site, or mark it as sold, we also flag it as sold or no longer current. We keep a track of what properties are no longer on the site and archive them and if you mark the record as sold or update the record in any way so do we.

R – we would not be loading properties to your portal. You say “assuming you take the listing off your site”. My initial post is that once the property exchanges we remove it from REA, Domain and RWM.

M – We are crawling for now, as this is the only way to get the inventory, however we believe that an XML/RSS model will appear (this is to the agents advantage for a variety of reasons) and agents will be able to feed portals data in real time.

R – Mike, agents expend significant time already uploading properties to the pay portals (they pay to subscribe and do all the manual work to appear). I agree that in time that XML/RSS will be the norm in time. However, at present agents don’t have access to these facilities and I think they are a few years away at this point in time.

M – To be frank we are still experiementing with how quick we can do this, the biggest bottleneck is the images, but once and agents properties are downloaded keeping it current is pretty easy and can be done every few hours and it is simply a matter of computing power.

R – My initial concerns are that I don’t want a secondary portal that lifts our properties and we have no control as the simple business plan is that you are milking our resources for free. With the intention of selling advertising space for you personal gain.

M – I didnt understand your point re: auctions and friction between the agent and buyer?

R – Mike this is very simple as purchasers always complain that they make buyer enquiries only to be advised that it has been already sold – yet the websites show it as being available.

Sydney averages around 200 – 300 – 400 – 500 public auctions on a Saturday (depending on the season and market). How quickly could you update ? Not to forget weekly public auctions.

Alas, and finally the greatest mistake of free property portals. A constant breach of copyright !! You have uploaded thousands of photographs, floor plans and property descriptions all of which have been paid for – and you use free of charge without the written consent of those who own those interlectual properties.

Still to be contested – however I suggest that your business would not want to be a test case.

My advice is that unless you are asked don’t participate. Unless, you have developed a property portal that redefines the currently boring property portal search criterias.

The one thing that REA and Domain have in common is the agents do all the work uploading the properties, and the purchasers do all the work filling in non – specific buying criterias. But, they do get paid for hosting our properties.

At least Domain take a purchaser/searcher/voyeur back to their last place of search.

I will further predict that the scatter gun mentality that has used and abused purchasers on paid portals in the past, will exactly be that.

As a frustrated agent on property portals I can say ” You can bank on that !! “

I think anyone who poses a serious threat to the portals by scraping their sites will get tied up by legal action or technical disruption ie blocking the crawlers by IP or layer 4 means there are ways to get around this but its complicated and its a moving target.

This is why we are going to the agents directly.

Let me appoligise if the comment about REA was percieved to be directly about you, it was not, it was simply an observation that most readers would question the motives of someone who didnt want the current duopoly to have healthy competition. Nothing more. Im sorry if you took it as a slur on you this was not my intention and I was unaware that you held REA. (you must admit though, it is sort of amusing that you do :)

It is an interesting discussion though, it appears that a select few dont want any competition to Domain or REA. Given the level of comments about the big two I do find it suprising.

If you want competition, then realise is isnt going to come from someone offering exactly the same thing as the big two. I would suggest no one will successfully launch an paid listing model in this country again.

Am I correct in assuming that the disenters want competition to the big two as long as their data is correct? If you provide an RSS feed of your properties it will be updated within the hour.

Re: Weekly scrape comment, this was Sam’s, its not our view. I see daily as the minimum, every 6 hours as ideal. If agents want to supply RSS/XML feeds as happens in the USA with Trulia then we will update it hourly.

We can only scrape what you have on the site. If you choose to put more data on Domain than on your own site there is very little I can do about this.

I cant change your opinion, you have an entrenched position and you have always done it this way. If it works for you, fantastic.

Industries evolve and change, some adapt and survive others dont, it would seem reasonable to keep an open mind and encourage new entrants rather than taking a negative, aggressive and litigious approach.

As a recent buyer and seller of a property, I dislike not having addresses and prices listed, I hate having to go to 2-3 websites to make sure I got all the properties in the suburb.

I hate having to get a street directory and then list the properties from 2-3 sources by inspection time on to a piece of paper and then do the rounds. All of this wastes my Sat morning. I suspect I am not alone.

In this age of immediate online gratification I believe most people who use this medium dont want to have to pick up the phone to find out where a property is or how much it is.

I didnt say YOU have bad data I dont know whats on your site, I dont even know your office. My view on data is that if I as a buyer cant find the property, work out if I can afford it, know how I can buy it and go look at it then its not enough data.

If your data is on the property listing we can accurately get it, if its in your listings book then we cant. When you remove it or list it as sold, we will remove it from current listings.

If I cant map it, then yes it will go to the bottom of the list because its not very useful to a user to map them all in the centre of the suburb.

The data requirements are those of the end user to make a decision to go inspect a property.

Thanks

Mike

PS Robert congrats on your 5 closes today and thanks for your best wishes. If you have any more questions I would be happy to answer them, if you like I would also be happy to show you a beta.