Google to buy up real estate sites!

When Google ventured into real estate listings many of us thought it would signal the end of annual fee increases being charged by the likes of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. I mentioned how it will eventually force these organisations to change their business models and build simpler, smarter platforms and I still do!

Despite making it clear that it will take time, some industry heavies quickly began commenting on how little effect Google was having on sites like realestate.com.au with increased share prices /revenues traffic figures. The most vigorous of these was writing on just about every single notable real estate blog (including his own) how it wasn’t making a jot of difference, I thought at the time, it was pretty short sighted from a person who should know better!

I also made it clear that it will take time for Google’s impact to occur. Only when Google Real Estate has similar volumes of listings and only when they include the searchability of these listings directly within the search engine will it begin to have an impact on the majors.

Now it seems Google is stepping it up a gear……..is this an aggressive phase for Google?

During a session at the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect conference in New York, Sam Sebastian, Google’s director of local and business-to-business markets, was quoted as saying “We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.”

Read this again………
“We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.” This statement speaks volumes of just how important Google thinks real estate is to their overall search strategy. It tells me they really do think it is one of the most popular search markets. Many people are talking of Google purchasing the likes of Trulia, Roost and some other independent companies. Personally, I think they will buy into products that compliment and drive traffic to their search and real estate website rather than buy other search engines and portals, they will also more than likely delve into products to compliment their Andriod operating system and new phone offerings.

Life without Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au?
One thing is for sure, in a few years the real estate landscape will be completely different. Once Google has comparable listings and if it is confident it has a faster way to search then all that needs to happen is for consumers to become aware and use the systems and things will get tough for the portals.

Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au continue to provide a decent service to agents, however it is the control that agents are wary of – no one likes having monopolies or duopolies, it only serves the few and each and every time hurts too many businesses and stifles innovation. Google’s involvement in any major industry allows a fair price to be charged for services, forces innovation and will make companies like Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au offer better support and services for their money.

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Real Estate Photos Being Altered But By Domain Not Open2View

On a slow news day late last month an eagle eye reporter of the Dominion Post newspaper in New Zealand reported on the shocking crime of turning the sky blue! The local Open2View real estate photographer had the temerity to use the same cloud formation on different photos and the Dominion Post caught them in this despicable crime.

Showing there is not much bigger than a politicians ego local MP Clayton Cosgrove chimed in on the issue when approached by the paper for comment that agents should show the property in “its ordinary environment” and “I just think it’s a bit on the nose. The more straight up you are, the better you are.”

Showing what a hypocrite he was, the MP who apparently proposed the recent real industry reform bill to parliament seemed to have no problem when he said that photoshopping photographs  ”could make me look slimmer and give me more hair”. Seems this kiwi pollie thinks misrepresenting his own looks is fine, but changing a sky blue is a little smelly!

Nobody suggested that the house was changed in anyway nor its surroundings. Nobody removed power lines, blotted out a bus stop at the front of the property,  added a garden that wasn’t there or anything else that misrepresented the property in anyway. They turned the sky blue, thats all.

The whole sordid affair started doing the rounds here in Australia after a local blog picked up on the story and it was retweeted on twitter.

Lets all put this in perspective shall we.  Nobody seems to want to hold Domain to task for altering photos that clearly misrepresent the property but everyone gets up in arms over a blue sky.

Domain does not display photos in the same aspect ratio that they are provided in and will warp the images.  Now when the photo is in landscape the differences are only minor and unless you see the original image side by side it is often difficult to tell. It is a little like when you go to your friends place and they have a fancy widescreen tv displaying a 4:3 or letterbox picture. It looks pretty close but everybody seems to have put on a little weight. So a small house appears bigger and a crowded room appears a little more spacious.

It’s when photos are provided in portrait orientation  things really start going astray.  Lets look at the same property on three different portals.

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Domain.com.au

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Realestate.com.au

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Myhome.com.au

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So if there is any Fairfax journalists thinking of running an Australian spin on the story,  maybe they should look a little closer to home first. Misrepresenting the size of a home or a room is far more serious than changing the colour of the sky.

Domain need to clean up their code and stop distorting photos because its a dangerous game to be misrepresenting properties these days with some government departments looking for scalps… even big ones that can afford to pay big fines.

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Domain’s RADAR

Today Domain announced the launch of their new search functionality RADAR. It is an extension of their existing search tool with additional options to allow the user to narrow their search for properties to include lifestyle features.

Additional lifestyle features property seekers can select include:

..transport, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, shopping centres, libraries, post offices, museums, high schools, primary schools, child care, golf courses, swimming pools, parks, hospitals, dentists, medical centres, police stations, airports, power stations, community centres, indoor sports facilities and more.

The tool then gives each property a rating out of 5 stars according to how well the property matches your criteria. They don’t mention how they calculate the rating but the tool is reasonably intuitive as it then tells you what features do or don’t match your criteria and also maps them in relation to the property. Read the rest of this article »

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Google Caffeine: The Winners and Losers

When Google releases new products or updates to existing products they usually do so with very little warning. One day it’s just there. Google recently announced that it was going to release major changes to their search engines.

Unlike other updates which Google has completed a preview of these new search results can be found at www2.sandbox.google.com and the new change has been nicknamed Caffeine

The results are for the US but you can manually add &gl=au to the end of the query string to get Australian specific results. Now it goes without saying that this is obviously not the final version as they would have released it if it was ready. Read the rest of this article »

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Google, REA & Domain – What’s The Deal?

There’s been a lot of speculation about why REA & Domain haven’t uploaded listings onto Google Maps real estate search as yet & I believe the main reason why is Money.

Reading between the lines Google, REA & Domain could stand to make a lot of money out of this deal. My theory is that a deal could be happening based around an Adsense style commission paid to REA & Domain.

Google makes most of its money through Pay Per Click advertising.

As PPC advertising became more & more popular Google ended up with more ads than ad impressions simply because people rarely searched past the first page on Google.

To solve this problem Google came up with Adsense. This enabled Google’s ads to appear on external websites by paying the website owner a percentage of the advertising revenue generated from their site.

Since launching real estate search on Google Maps, Google have been able to expand their potential online advertising space at the mind blowing rate of approx. 1 million pages.

For example, when you click on any one of the listings on Google Maps & then click the More Info link you’ll see 4 tabs – Overview, Details, Photos & Web Pages.

On each of these pages there is a vacant area to the right or at the bottom that is just screaming out for the Sponsored Links to appear.

If you look closely on the Web Pages page you’ll notice that as more sites feed their listings on, more Web Pages links like Homehound, MyHome, the agents website, etc appear down the page. This automatically expands the currently vacant area on the right hand side of this page. Just waiting for Google to turn on the Sponsored Links switch.

At first I couldn’t understand why Google would display numerous feeds for the one listing but now I get it.

The whole thing is a brilliantly devised concept by Google to expand their PPC advertising space. They’ve even designed it in such a way that they get 4 or 5 pages of advertising per property listing.

With Google reporting hundreds of thousands of listings being uploaded since the launch that adds up to approx. 1 million pages that they can now advertise on, with a lot more on their way as they roll this concept out globally.

And with total control over where they place their sponsored links Google will want every listing they can get. That’s why Google won’t charge agents to upload their listings & it’s also the reason why they will allow private sellers.

When you think about it REA & Domain have virtually all the online listings in Australia & getting a feed from them would be extremely lucrative to Google & will add millions of extra pages to their site, so it makes sense that Google will probably pay an Adsense style of commission to REA & Domain to have their listings feed.

So all I’m wondering now is what’s the deal? And how much more money do REA & Domain stand to make out of real estate agents’ listings?

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