Google has beefed up its map search considerably with basic natural phrases now added. In the past a user has to select real estate, now all they need to do is use basic search terms in mapping.

Here is the official Google press release from Google.

Around half of the Googlers in our Sydney headquarters are software engineers, working on some really cool things – Google Wave, App Engine, Google Docs, and of course, Google Maps.

Recently, some of us have been working on a particularly interesting project that combines Google Maps and search technology – we’ve been trying to work out if your search query in Google Maps means you’re interested in having current real estate listings returned to you. It’s nice to get to work on some ’search’ engineering down here! Read the rest of this article »

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I recently wrote about using Google Insights to compare the relative strength of each real estate brand in Australia. I showed how you could compare each brand against each other and how you could also see the strength of each brand across the states.

When I shared this, it was in fact the second way I had found to independently compare the major brands around Australia. As I chose to explore the first option a bit more before writing about it I shared here about the Google Insights method.  It’s now time to share the first method I found which uses Google Maps Real Estate and approaches it on a completely different basis.

Realestate.com.au and Domain will have you believe that Google has only a small percentage of the total number of listings.  From my experience that is not the case and Google has far  more listings than domain and much closer to Realestate.com.au. Back in August I actually spent a bit of time analysing the matter for an article on our agency blog about the subject. In our area at least the numbers were very close.

The one group of real estate agents that  are all featured on Google Maps are the major real estate groups. Now using Google Maps, or even the maps sections of any of the portals you could always view all the properties in an area, but there was no easy way to determine which listings belonged to which agents. Ideally each agency should be in a different colour much like different coloured pins on a large wall map.

In a little know addition to Google Maps you can now plot multiple searches on the one map.  To show you how to do this I have created a video comparing some real estate major brands first in South East Queensland and then scroll  down to the  southern states.

Very soon to be released on the market is a free online tool that will take this concept to a local level and allow you to plot individual offices against each other. You will be able to view the property your agency has in one colour and listings for sale each of your competitors have in other colours.

*****UPDATE*****

I was just sent this update on the mapping service I referred to above. This will go down to the local agent level and allow  you to identify hot spots and opportunities and will provide excellent market intelligence for the agents that use it right.  I believe the service will be free with possibly some advertising on the side and your settings can be saved so you can look at it live any time you want.  More details when it launches and I think that is goign to be early next week.

In case your interested we (Nerang First National) are the green, LJ Hooker Nerang is the Red and Ray White Nerang is the blue. There are about another 7 other agents in the area but ourselves and Hookers are the dominant market players.

Click to Enlarge

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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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Google has just announced that it will be bringing its ” Street View” images to Australia with images captured over the next several months and become available for viewing later this year.

Google Street View is an added feature of their highly popular Google Maps that provides 360° panoramic views of the street at ground level. It was launched in May this year in the US for a limited number of cities which has been slowly expanded.

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In the past 18 months we have seen many of the large players trying to get into the local business directory market with little to no success. It was a ‘Hurry now Offer cannot last” scenario where businesses were told to spend $600+ per annum to have their name listed in a business directory, if you were one of the bright businesses and basically let it go – congratulations you just saved your money.

When it was announced I cringed and I was given a call by both of the major players; truelocal.com.au and mylocal.com.au and I basically made the telephone sales person back peddle a mile from their original pitch, unfortunately many Australians were fooled into thinking that this may be of benefit to them. Now it is 12 months on and many of these people will be due for renewal, I can see prices dropping all over the place.

Why? Well you can have all of this for FREE. Google Maps has been released in Australia for a few short months. All you need to do is:

1. Register: (you will need a free Google Gmail Account)
2. Edit your Details – make sure you include as much information as possible, have you logo ready, and some information about your company)
3. Wait about 10 days to receive a letter from Google with your code to verify your address. Then login and add your code and your listing will be up on the directory in no time.

So truelocal and mylocal are finished at these prices, and I am glad for it. I remember years ago WIN Television released a product called mydirectory.com.au which has since gone bust along with the quote ‘before its time’ from the owners. Yes, we are now all ready to put a virtual tour of our business on a directory for $700 bucks a year – pathetic!

Here is my message to big business. If you want to make money online provide real value to your target market and your audience first and the art of making money second then make sure you give them all a reason to go back, then employ people who actually know what they are doing.

Another good thing to come out of this is that Sensis will have to work a hell of allot harder to get people to renew their Yellow Pages and the price increases they have enjoyed over the years will soon be a thing of the past – all it takes is businesses to think. Think about what cost and the return these types of ads bring to your business.

I am not saying they do not have a place – but the value is just totally out of touch with the reality. So get onto Google Maps Australia, might not be much in the short term but it will be of benefit in the long term!

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One must be impressed by the pace in which realestate.com.au moves when a threat (minor or not) rears its head.

In this case it is mapping.

Realestate.com.au have now upgraded their mapping system to be included in search results and I must say whilst it is not perfect, it is pretty darn good.

One thing I can say is that Domain.com.au (whilst the first of the majors to do this) must now continue to develop their mapping solution.

Realestate.com.au’s solution includes all of the properties from your search, so if you searched a wide area it includes all o the listings from the one pop up. This is the first time I have seen anyone do this and it is impressive.

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Now, I have seen a mapping site that has just blown me away. It uses data from realestate.com.au/domain.com.au and uses the Microsoft Virtual Earth Mapping Service.

The Spyk site is basically a mash-up, which is taking data from a variety of sources such as Virtual Earth. The user gets a mapping system and a simple search tools.

Notice how most of the screen is made up of the map. You can move the map by clicking and dragging the map and you can also zoom in and out.

It is a wonderful example of what is to come and although this will no doubt raise the ire of the major portals domain.com.au and realestate.com.au and possible legal action (which in my view they will find hard to win but too expensive to fight for Spyk).

The site is only in its beta release and does have its annoyances but it has raised the bar in terms of interface and structure!

Click here to view the site……

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Elizabeth raised a wonderful question in regards to advertising and mapping. She is worried that a mapping site will just be covered in advertising. Firstly we need to look at the current market leader realestate.com.au.

I am going to ignore the celebrations going on on realestate.com.au’s site (site pretty much shuts down in Firefox browser until balloons finish loading – 10% of visitors)

I have marked out in pink all of the advertising on the home page of realestate.com.au and this is not including pop ups!

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Realestate.com.au are now trialling Google Maps, which is a sure sign that they will be dumping there mapping system altogether shortly. This comes just a few months after the the CEO of realestate.com.au Simon Baker pretty much poured cold water on mapping and real estate saying this on his weblog….CEO Corner

“We have all heard alot about real estate sites and mapping recently with many articles being written in newspapers and magazines. While some pundits may be seduced by the sexy maps, when it comes to those that really matter, the buyers and sellers visiting the real estate sites, it is pictures and slide shows that really count.”
I think it is a good sign as Realestate.com.au’s mapping system was pretty ordinary and developing their own custom solution would just waste millions of dollars, especially when there are solutions readily available for free that are so much better and will continue to improve.

This will just be the first stage of the mapping system and it does not warrant a review as yet as this was done fairly quickly, but as they release new features we should see a really good mapping system. I just hope the make it resizable!

Before the end of the year a new mapping website that shows amazing promise will be available and I have been given access to it. The new Australia Wide wite will be FREE for agents as the operators have decided they can make their money from advertisers who want to be where buyers are.

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Domain.com.au recently launched its new website and to be honest, I really cannot see what they have got right! It isn’t that the site is not good, but it by no means an exciting development. The site has added Google Maps, which is interesting, but again it (as with all mapping developments) it is done with little to no thought of its user. For mapping to work it must take up most of the screen – at least from left to right. It is however an improvement on realestate.com.au’s poor (soon to be shelved I feel) mapping system.

The new domain.com.au site is not too bad, but they really need to think more of agencies and consumers if they are going to make any inroads into realestate.com.au’s portal and business.

The new site’s home page seems to have catered more to advertisers rather than agencies and users. One feels it is going to be a long few years in the residential space for domain.com.au.

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