[from previous post and moved here]

Google has expanded on their Real Estate offering in the states quite dramatically over the past few days. Whilst it still resides inside Google Base for the moment, it is getting its own special treatment.

I have discussed the details with Peter and I know he is waiting for a response from Google before posting an article for everyone on it so expect more details very soon.

The killer feature that will make it all work is that the Real Estate Google Base will be integrated into the normal web search. What this means is that if you search for “Mosman Real Estate” on Google your listings will come up in the results. Now tell me who would not want that.

The service is running live right now but the unfortunate part is that they localise the search based upon your source country. So if you live in the US, a search in San Diego (http://www.google.com/search?q=homes for sale in San Diego) the results will provide links to actual real estate for sale, but in Australia all we see is the standard web search. Hopefully Peter is organising with somebody in the US to grab some screen grabs for us.

Part of Google’s summary on this new service to agents/brokers is:

***”We don’t charge for photos or offer “featured listings.” We believe that buyers just want to see the home that fits them best and that providers shouldn’t have to pay to show it to them. We don’t sell houses, deal with agents’ compensation, or charge for leads. Our business is helping people find the information they’re looking for—when you have it, we send them directly to you.”***

To me that summarises their position perfectly and is why REA and Domain are shaking in their boots, or if they are not, why they should be. If your a shareholder in REA right now, you may want to take a good hard look at the fundmentals and future outlook of this industry.

In the US there is nobody playing the role of what REA and Domain do here. To charge agents to list on a National portal seems to be completely unheard of let along locking agents into 12 months and 2 year contracts.

Companies like Zillow and Trulia that dominate the US scene nationally run on different models allowing agents to upload for FREE. Not only do the provide essentially the same service as Australian Portals for FREE they also offer free tools for you to integrate into your site. Just like Google now, Both Zillow and Trulia allow you upload your listings, or they will index if you supply them your web address. This is what Realsearch tried to emulate but their execution let them down. At the end of the day that comes down to money. They tried to release a national solution on a shoestring budget.

If Google, or in fact Zillow or Trulia come to Australia they will change the face of Real Estate online overnight. IMHO PBL would have been far better off negotiating the Australian rights for Zillow or Trulia for that $100m investment. At least they would have had a functioning, feature rich and real world tested website structure that would own this industry. Their website might have then lived up to the hype that they gave themselves.

There is a stack more details on Google’s new release but I dont want to steal all Peters thunder so I will leave it there for him.

Great Post… !!!

If they announce a release in Australia, I think many many people will join you.

Great post Peter - those a4 batteries work wonders.

I guess the only thing left is to work out which format they will use and will it be a portal or a search engine ? Are we to assume that it will roll out using beta ?

As Glenn said ” The killer feature that will make it all work is that the Real Estate Google Base will be integrated into the normal web search. What this means is that if you search for “Mosman Real Estate” on Google your listings will come up in the results. Now tell me who would not want that.”

So with a Mosman Real Estate search we will see Google Maps that then identify the balloon, which then takes the searcher to the individual website template ?

Should this be the case there will be plenty of agents that need to be compliant with Google search functionality by having page indexing. Otherwise searches will deliver a dead link. I have made our website 100% compliant and we are with Google Base. However, given that this is a slow release it makes ones wonder on what the definition of slow is ?

I am not a great admirer of beta, as it can be convoluted and time consuming to ascertain individual property determination.

Still too early to call in my opinion.

Glenn and Robert

I think you are both right, in relation to beta releases, I think myself included all of the providers are really in beta modes and have been for years. None of us are perfect.

Beta for Google is just a term. They have products in beta mode for years and in most cases they work perfectly.

With independent agents it is important to start the planning now. It is good to see Portplus integrating this already and I am sure Mydesktop will also.

It will be a testing time for portals, but it will take a while to have an effect. It is up to the consumers as to the success of it. Google will not get a free ride in the press with this one as it effects too many of the major players. But Google have an amazing way of getting publicity for anything they do because so many technology writers and so many people now use their products.

I as a company are looking forward to it.

Nice spotting Sam.

Technically Domain is still at the top with that shortcut “Visit Yahoo!7 Real Estate for properties to buy or rent” but neither Domain or Realestate.com.au are not at the top of the organic results.

Google has a reputation of not fiddling too much with the organic results (competitors ranking very poorly or not at all) but they certainly do provide shortcuts to their own stuff at the top just like Yahoo. Of course their ranking algorithm probably has something that gives any google based site a few bonus points…

As an example.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=spreadsheet&btnG=Search&meta=

Just curious in that has anyone here ever subscribed to Google Adwords and what was the success ? Personally, I find my eyes are trained to the left of screen and only very rarely do I look at Adwords ?

That was tongue in cheek Elizabeth. The REI’s aren’t capable of building a portal that works. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Snoop,

You are not the only one scratching respective heads on that question as I see it there are two case scenarios. That being worst and best. Best = Google just go away ….. yeah right !!

Fairfax Media can package Fairfax Digital into their newspapers with the one stop shop. I think they would be fast tracking launches in Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin with their recent launch of www.brisbanetimes.com.au They also have the Rural Press acquisition to play with so they have a national brand building which would be aimed at creating new dynamic markets. They also have their other online brands mycareer, drive, business day, RSVP and stayz to add further values.

REA - well they are in the hands of their shareholders so anything could happen there. A strong possibility of adverse publicity with media scare campaigns. I think should this happen News would be a happy buyer as again they can package this portal into their newspapers. This would also offer News an opportunity to then copy Fairfax by rolling out their versions of Saturday Domain in The Weekend Australian. Also their own versions of Domain East, Domain East and Domain Inner West weekly in The Australian. One must also remember that News Limited own the Cumberland Newspaper Group and they are soon to complete the FPC acquisition so, they have plenty of newspaper artillery. News Limited have always wanted their own property portal and more recently REA have been mast heading the real estate sections in their weekly newspapers. A very strong possibility that News will own REA completely.

Whilst this discussion still remains highly hypothetical should Google become a reality it is highly probable that REA and Domain revenues will face an up-hill battle. Most likely to me is that they both will half monthly subscriptions so that agent costs remain the same which is imperative. This would then allow both businesses to keep oxygen in their businesses whilst they develop new strategies.

No doubt News and Fairfax will be keeping a close eye on each other. Fairfax have another distinct advantage in that they print their junior domain’s in newsprint. Where News Ltd newspapers are in a much more expensive high gloss so Fairfax have better margins.

If News roll out a weekly midweek and Saturday real estate edition that would probably be also in newsprint which would see agents / vendors question the high cost of gloss in their suburban newspapers.

It will be riveting to see what happens both in print and online. I would put Fairfax ahead of News as they will be pairing off against each other with Google left unchallenged with online as it will be free to agents.

What ever happens Advantage Agent / Vendor !!

Peter said,

“I think REA will roll out a clean site sooner rather than later.” Brings a smile to my face as REA have milked the agents for all their worth for their own personal gains. They refused to change this mentality as they placed themselves ahead of their clients the agents and their vendors.

Whether it is too late remains to be seen - they are wounded on an agency based relationship given their decision to pursue third party advertising.

If we see a change where they clean the homepage will simply identify that they are running scared. Why ? Because before when this very point was raised they ignored it.

Rea are certainly followers
They spend hundreds of thousands sending their staff to conferences in the US every year,but you see nothing in terms of industry leading or creative stuff.
REA also make over 6m a year on paid advertising from non listing based ads,so you wont see the site decluttering.
I think they are at a turning point and it will be very interesting to see how they deliver increased value to justify their price increases every year which they tend to base on the increased circulation/traffic model.

Thats the problem alright… we pay a fortune for these enquiries and so many are not answered.

Our realestate.com.au rep told me they personally sent out 10 enquiries here on the Gold Coast when they were looking for a new home. Only one agent followed up on time and another agent followed up several days later.. That was an 80% non response rate.. Unfortunatley you cant put a big flashing sign on your ads on realestate.com.au saying that you “We will respond, I promise”

Sam, if you want to get a result, tell them you want to make an offer on the property. They will call you then … maybe!

I think its an industry problem.
Change the remuneration model to nz where agents get no retainer and i gaurantee you will see a higher level of customer service.

This question could easily turn into a thesis. As one of the very few Google Adwords Qualified Companies in Australia, we manage more than 2 million ads on search each week. Google local in the USA is huge and becoming more like a yellow pages online for your area. The thought of an online directory of property for sale fits in with googles thirst for knowledge of all things for relevant search. The interesting point put forward above about adwords is that adwords is still the vast majority of income for Google, and they are very proactive in its protection and expansion, just look at their movement in China recently. Our clients currently advertise on the paid search listings for both agencies and for individual properties, charges which can go back to the individual vendor, just like a sign out the front. Our lead enquiry rates are very high and it is definately productive given pay per lead. So far as Robert states above re not looking to the sponsored links on the right, we now see Google with 3 to 4 listings at the top of the algorythmic (free if you can call them that - given the work you have to do to get and stay there) which look like free listings. Yahoo also have this top section and even have 1 or 2 at the bottom of the page.

Good research Robert. Google has made it very easy to set up an account and put ads up. Like any other industry, it then falls back on knowledge, comparitives and at the end of the day, cost per lead or cost per sale. A mate told me recently that real estate gets some 2 million searches per month, domain 1.5 mil and google and yahoo are the other 50%. He is in a position to know, so I cant rebut him. Adwords is a 7 billion USD industry, and last year aussis spent 1 billion online in advertising (real estate industry included). Funny thing is, these days, people still spend thousands on a brochure, or a mail drop and are happy with 2% conversion. Last week we averaged 8.43% conversion on all ads on google for all clients in all industries, and thats just on form fills, you know, fill in the form on the site to ask a question, or inquire or register. No phone calls, no emails, and no sales from shopping carts. I am looking forward to providing some real info on this blog, just the facts, just the facts.

As with anything, there is no certainty in one course of action. These days, we look to margin, and of course supporting multiple avenues THAT WORK. Those that generate leads, which real estate sales rely on, as you cannot to this point sell a house or land on line, are many and varied. Those that embrace technology, in a controlled environment that is able to customise their needs and budget, will win over those that do not. I would never suggest that all industries on line should shut out all other forms of advertising, but when you compare the reporting, tracking and final figures, none, and I am happy to say, NONE, are more accountable than on line searc (apart from your staff of course) Take the plunge, try it yourself, set it up and let the public test your site and its CONVERSIONABILITY - that is how many people trade off their personal data to you on a visit (divided by 100) At the end of the day, the public decides if they trust you, like you and are interested in the product you display. Not the advertising agencies, sites or search engines, it’s your site and its offerings.

Good Question mate. Like anything, each medium should be tried, tested, tracked and measured against its competitors. Putting it back to you, could you advise your best and average leads per dollar scenarios on your portal experiences. By this, you should have a good idea how many inquiries you get each month for your dollars, thereby determining a cost per lead. Then you should have a good idea of a cost per sale, ie how much it takes you to spend each month to get the required leads to actually sell a listing. This will be a very interesting question to answer and could start a whole new thread. PS My agents tell me they average about $2000 a sale in advertising (total) to achieve a sale.

Little news release from Google re Analytics that may interest some.

http://hotgoanna.com/blog/category/google/

My account was switched over this morning… VERY NICE.. !!!