Google Trends has allowed users to compare the the number of searches for specific keywords. You could compare how popular searches for “Sydney Real Estate For Sale” compared against “Sydney Property For Sale”. Just recently Google has added the ability to compare actual visitors to specific sites. Your site has to produced significant traffic to appear on their radar so virtually all individual agent websites don’t produce the traffic to show, but lots of sites do as per the examples.

These are some graphs I have created using the tool. The graphs speak for themselves but there are a couple of things worth specifically noting. Look at MyHome since the money got turned off. Shane definitely has some work ahead of him just to return it to is previous traffic levels.

Also, have a look at the domain and REA comparison. REA really lost ground very late 2007 however they bounced back. I remember commenting on this at the time but have never revisited it. In recent months, REA looks to be more effected by the slowdown in the industry although this could just be the resolution of the graph too.

I could not help put in the trading post versus ebay graph given my recent post on Sensis. How they think they can compare their numbers is crazy. Interesting to see that whitepages and yellowpages traffic is down substantially over the past year.

Anyway.. on to the graphs (please note.. if you want to have a play yourself to get the actual traffic numbers you have to have an account or else you get the trend lines only, I think)

I shrinked the graphs so they appear on the web page better but have linked them to our image host so you can view the slightly larger versions yourself or you could even visit Google Trends and run your own report at Google Trends.

Sensis bought www.tradingpost.com.au in 2004 for a massive $636 million dollars and the business has been sliding back on them since then.

Some pretty big claims have been coming out of Sensis lately, including one that states “2 million people” already use www.tradingpost.com.au each month. Sensis were trying to hold this up against ebay’s 5 million account holders to show that they might gain traction in online auctions.

Now that has to be PR spin plain and simple. After reading this I quickly surveyed the next 20 people I met and not one person had visited www.tradingpost.com.au within the past several months and most have never visited it at all.

Maybe they had 2 million visits, but I doubt they had 2 million visitors. Could you imagine how many visits ebay.com.au would have every single month to compare this against.

Fanciful claims coming out Sensis staff is nothing new though. In the past we have seen claims from a self confessed rank and file Sensis employee (that seemed like a PR person incognito) that Sensis was responsible for generating $61 billion of sales from just the Metro editions of the Yellow Pages. When challenged he offered some Doctor as proof of the figures hoping that might impress.. and then when challenged again admitted that he remembered it off some powerpoint slide he seen once and that meant of course that there was no proof, not one single shred of evidence to his claim.

(see http://www.business2.com.au/2007/07/22/yellow-pages-advertising-closing-soon/)

Of course that was a little hard to prove considering it represented nearly 10% of Australia’s GDP and thus meant $1 in every $10 spent in Australia was meant to have been generated through just a handful of Yellow Pages editions around Australia.

Sensis have released recently that they are working on an iPhone search application which is interesting as its parent company, Telsta has not confirmed it will even be handling the iPhone when it comes here, unlike Vodaphone and Optus who have both shouted out loud about their involvement.

Sensis was going to set the search world on fire but their attempt was just laughable. Google delivered us just a touch over 63,000 visits over the past 12 months. In that same time Sensis.com.au delivered… wait for it… 8.

Lets not forget the www.whitepages.com.au… that was actually responsible for another 8 visits. I get far more traffic in a week from people clicking on my name on this blog than I get from Sensis in a year.

Sensis have never impressed online and I cant see them turning it around and now they expect us to believe that they are to tackle the online auction space. Whats Next..? Maybe they might try and follow www.trademe.co.nz impessive example and take on real estate classifieds. Better watch out REA, their online pedigree is impressive!

Every year since 2004 I have been adding my own dumb and dumber awards. Usually is it a hard slog getting so many out the door, but why was 2007 different? Anyway sit back and have a giggle at some of the dumbest moments in real estate and technology for 2007.

PBL & MICROSOFT
1. It was without doubt the most anticipated launch of 2007 and is without doubt the worst major real estate website in Australasian history. I still cringe when looking at it. How could two major companies, Ninemsn and Microsoft get something so drastically wrong? Agents found themselves subscribed to a site they had never subscribed to, with listings sold years earlier. Agents also found that agents who no longer worked at their agency were listed alongside listings no longer under their agencies control.

2. MyHome struck a cord with only themselves and thus will fade further into oblivion in 2008 unless someone steps in and makes some radical changes. MyHome incorrectly perceived themselves as pretty cool. The standout memory for me was Senior Management in the Applesque (Steve Jobs) photo pose splashed in newspapers across the land. Soon, after all senior management had gone, the site tried in vain to claw back some respectability.

3. What do you do when you have a website with only 30% of your competitors’ listings and exactly the same data within that small percentage? What do you do when statistical data tells you that people stay on your website for less time than it takes to boil a kettle? It seems MyHome’s idea was to spend millions of dollars just telling everyone about it. When will it run out? Well, as soon as the people paying the bills ask one very simple question “What are we getting in return for our money?”

TELSTRA
1. Has any one company spat the dummy so many times in the past 12 months? Good ol Sol knows a good monopoly when he has one and will do anything to maintain the status quo. Many developed Nations have real broadband and laugh at us whilst we still pay ‘line rental’ and have local and national call rates, we will continue to be held to ransom by Telstra until there is real competition. Telstra have tried in vein to make the public warm to them, however the majority of Australians have an immense dislike of the company after many years of being dictated to and so are eager to move on to other offerings such as Naked DSL . (No need for telephone lines here and free local and national phone calls including broadband for one monthly fee.)

2008 will be an absolute shocker for Telstra unless it can get what it wants.

FAIRFAX DIGITAL
1. Fairfax Digital are one of the most progressive technology companies in Australia. However even big boys forget to pay their bills. One overzealous accounts department person from Web Central decided to suspend the domain name www.commercialrealestate.com.au for non payment of an $88.00 invoice. The site was down for a number of days. Of course News Ltd Newspapers made the pain last longer with many articles on this most basic of blunders.

2. Websites go down, but Domain seems to be down more and more. The reason? Who knows, from my experience it comes down to too many developments slapped on top of other projects until something simple fails and brings the whole deck down. Let’s hope it is all behind them as it makes no difference to agents invoices and only costs them potential business.

3. Adore may have had a big launch and may have had some enthusiastic backers. However, it was just another website for chest thumpers and has been slowly whittled away to nothing more than an expensive exercise. Another example of an executives idea of making more money out of agents. If the data is the same that is on a main website with all the listings then consumers will simply not bother, no matter how pretty it is.

SENSIS
1. Justlisted.com.au noted as one of the worst real estate sites ever in Australia’s big business history went for a revamp early in the year. A notice was sent out that they would be closing over the New Year and performing maintenance on their website. Some 14 days later the website was up again resplendent with all of the changes you would expect from such a significant outage– Absolutely Zero.

2. Many wondered what the hell the people at Sensis were thinking when they built a website with, well, exactly the same information as that which is on Domain.com.au. Granted it is a nice little idea, but can someone tell me why I would visit a site to search for listings which just sends me to another website to view those listings when I could have just gone to the destination site in the first place?

3. Maybe they were scared because big boy PBL got it wrong, maybe they thought it was just too hard, but by giving up on Real Estate, Sensis has become a lightweight of the Internet. With so many other web based services that are successful you would think a slow building national real estate portal would be a feather in their cap. Instead we have – well I am still not sure what we have with Just Listed.

4. I still wonder why agents spend so much money on massive ads in the Yellow Pages, I really do not know anyone who uses the print directory any more. I am sure their are hundreds of thousands who still do, but the Yellow Pages print version is destined for oblivion. Well, I thought that was the case, until a Yellow Pages executive posted a comment to my article on business2 touting that the directory was responsible for $61 Billion worth of sales to advertisers in capital cities alone! Now that is around 1/20th of our GDP. If this was the case the directory would be filled to the brim with advertisers and would need to be delivered by forklift. Of course it was internal research. So how is this done? Well just grab a calculator and multiply heaps of numbers by heaps of numbers by heaps of numbers—Easy hey!

FEDERAL STATE & LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
1. As everyone tries to find a way to get first home buyers into the market, not one government, local, state or federal have put forward one initiative that will actually make a difference. Whilst we have governments either too scared to act or too dumb to know that the crisis will grow worse year by year until a time when agents will be selling properties only to the 20% of Australians who will be able to afford them and renting real estate to the rest.

2. Thanks to the relaxing of media ownership laws we now have the competition we all dreamed of, more newspapers, television stations, radio broadcasters and lower advertising rates. Wait….no we don’t! The big boys just keep buying up other big-but-not-so-big boys.

REA AUSTRALIA
1. Around this time last year many sites starting touting the benefits of mapping and a few sites added mapping or were about to hit the horizon with mapping solutions. The CEO of Real Estate.com.au Simon Baker was having none of this, so he quickly tried to discredit mapping (to a degree) by referring to some research completed in the USA which stated that “that 88% of respondents wanted multiple pictures and slide shows, 86% wanted virtual tours, and 84% wanted neighbourhood profiles. However only 43% indicated they wanted maps and directions and only 24% cared about online mortgages‘ thereby telling us that people did not want mapping and how this research aligned with REA’s own research. Result? REA added mapping solutions and now tout the benefits of their own mapping system over their competitors. REA took an each way bet and continued with the Google Maps and is now one of the largest mapping sites in the world, their own mapping systems have taken a back-seat to the Google Maps platform.

PETER RICCI
1. April 1st 2007. Google buys REA! One of the bloggers decided to spend a little time and create a page with a press release that Google had purchased REA. I tried to call someone from REA but did not get a response. So I did what any hacker journalist would do and put up a press release and waited. It didn’t take long before I was banged to right and forced to eat humble pie, much to the delight of many.

I even received a few direct emails telling me that I got what I deserved and that I should take a course in journalism to understand the checks and balances that these journalists go through for each story they publish and how bloggers were a blight on ‘journalistic integrity’. I ate my humble pie but kept those emails just for laughs, as I love how seriously some people take themselves!

REALSEARCH
1. Real Search, yes another ‘Google of Real Estate’ – decided to launch a site and promptly sent press releases everywhere and anywhere. The site basically mined other websites for property data and presented it without the authorisation of the sites it was mining. Result? Companies started sending legal notices from everywhere and anywhere and the site was taken down within days.

Real Search has now re-invented itself and wants to hug all independent real estate agencies and help them to play on a level playing field with franchises. Funny, I thought many well run independents actually did better than franchises. We now have a countdown for launch which I am sure has changed a couple of times and around three agents across Australia are closely monitoring.

HOME PRICING WEBSITES
1. I takes me hat off to all of those house pricing websites advertising on major real estate portals. These companies basically ‘help’ people by sending their details to any agent who is willing to pay money for their information. Heaven help us if any one of these sites becomes massively popular (which they will not, especially with this business model) as agents will eventually pay through the nose for these so called ‘leads’.

The day will come when we can rid ourselves of these junk sites and concentrate on real information and real benefits for real estate agents. I am sure the real estate portals are working on their own solutions but don’t hold your breath as I am also sure that they will have some pretty juicy pricing models for themselves.

NEW REAL ESTATE PORTALS
1. This is a collective award to all of the new ‘Google of Real Estate’ portals that launched in 2007, the result being that none of them have made a difference. One day someone will release a portal, get it right and slowly build a market share without spending any money telling people about it until they get that market share. Out of all the new sites, only MyHome has a chance at this stage but they will need a brain transplant if they are ever to challenge the big boys.

These real estate portals need to go back to school or concentrate on specific areas of real estate, such as land or waterfront listings. We need something fresh and we need something that all real estate agents will embrace. Free is not free if it requires work from agents or their developers. Cheap means absolutely zero if agents do not get genuine leads.

PROPERTY GUIDES – MAGAZINES
1. Yes some of these are gorgeous to look at, but a day will come when agents say, what are we spending our money on and where are we getting a return? The result is we have more and more magazines sitting on the streets, outside empty shops and more often than not, quickly ending up in rubbish bins.

Yes, there is a place for property guides, but these companies are going to face some big hurdles in the future if they continually just dump magazines on lawns, on top of letter boxes or deliver (in my case) double the amount of guides for the number of apartments. Agents more than ever understand that these are just marketing guides for their companies and really do not do much to sell properties.

VANITY YARD SIGNS
1. A message to all of those agents who charge vendors for yard signs and then place a life-size picture of themselves on that sign with very little real property information. Clever? Maybe, but I for one would ask one very simple question.

Am I paying for you to promote yourself or for you to promote my property? Vanity signage is becoming more and more commonplace. Having a sign that tells me “I will love this place” with a big picture of a smiling person and a whopping big logo may be cheaper to produce but they do nothing for the vendor.

I pine for the good old days where a sign told me how many bedrooms, livingrooms, bathrooms, car spaces and so on and gave me a little insight into what was actually on offer and I am sure many other buyers and potential tenants do also.

TV NETWORKS
1. Oh how the Internet is hurting advertising revenues! We now have every TV network advertising business luminaries such as Gerry Harvey and John Simmons with their ThinkTV campaigns. Yes TV is still powerful (albeit shrinking). They even have their very own model of ratings (just use that calculator again) and about 3% of Australian businesses that can afford to advertise on TV!

TV is on the decline and will not be able to survive in the long term unless it gives the consumer what they want, when they want it. The only hope I see is the streaming medium whereby businesses can have their TV ads appear in certain regions for a massively reduced price. But while eyeballs are moving onto the Internet and mobile phones, if all the TV networks can do is try to hold the fort – they will die a very slow death.

NEWSPAPERS
1. Get your DVD, CD’s, Magazines and Souvenir editions with any newspaper! Read about Jennifer, Brad, Brittany, Kylie and any celebrity scandal you can think of (just get a photo and make up a story). Try as they might to grab some ‘Generation Me’ they continue to fail, despite trying really, really hard. Perhaps keeping the loyal readers might be an idea for long term survival.

Newspapers need to do what they do best and that is pure journalism instead of trumped up headlines and smut peddling (we can get that elsewhere thanks). They have made some great inroads online and I am sure they have a few years left until of course they have to bite the bullet and become FREE!

CORPSES
Here we have a bank that really knows how to sell! Firstly they repossess a home and then put it on the market for auction. Now this is one feature the new owners definitely did not pay for – a complete mummified corpse of its former owner, who had stopped making mortgage payments six years earlier.

Apparently the body, was preserved by the salty air in the Spanish seaside town of Roses and was found by, you guessed it – the buyer!

More Fun 2007 Dumb and Dumber Lists
Fortune Magazine 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
Business2 (USA) 101 Dumbest Moments
Daily News 50 Dumbest People in Hollywood

So what could they do? First thing they would need to do is make a purchase and this is what PBL should have done. The best purchase around Australia at the moment is Portplus which is rumoured to have around 1300 agents on their books. This would put Port Plus in the 10-15 million dollar mark if history is to judge on past purchases (property.com.au, hub online, commercialrealestate).

Remember Just Listed is a free site so any purchase would not include a jump in fees for agents in fact they would reap the benefits of a system for exporting (annual fees) and also the knowledge behind these systems. This company could then easily build a national portal (please start again) as they have done so in the past. There are other purchases out there such as Rockend or ReNet (which is pretty big) in which both have excellent technologies but I would think that like my company they would not be big enough (although Rockend is bigger than my little company and ReNet bigger still).

So I wonder what Sensis is up to as they have been terribly quiet of late in the online classifieds space.

Not only this I can actually tag this information for other people to see. It really is a developers dream. Developers we will be able to tag information by simple viewing a property and inputting the co-ordinates. Hook into the Google Earth communication server and draw a series of maps from a variety of distances so that the home buyer can view the property location.

I have already employed a developer to do something like this. This is so much more useful and let alone fun for people than other offerings such as Whereis.com.au where if I wanted to this this I would need to pay money to the company for pretty much useless information. It may work for cars but whereis.com.au and other offerings are pretty uselss for web users.

THE IMAGE BELOW SHOWS MY HOUSE LOCATION (zoomed) AND A LARGER FIELD VIEW

Yes Google Earth is the real deal and it is going to have some severe ramifications for the Sensis owned www.whereis.com.au. This is becuase developers can get access to the system and use it for free on their websites.

I will report on this at a later date when I can provide you all with a demonstration.

Note: Link no longer exists.

1. The site has just basic information for each property. This is bad because the general public is so used to getting so much more information through listings on sites such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. House Size, Land Size, VR Tours, Floor Plans. The Internet is built around being able to deliver a wealth of information so that the public can make an informed decision about contacting an agent. The old newspaper days of telling us little and getting us to contact agents is over, although still applicable to newspapers. This saves agents time and money and also the consumer.

2. Fix the damn system up
Having to upload images thru a client side software package separate from listing information is time consuming and just plumb dumb. Fix this up please.

3.Accept Feeds
As agents move more and more towards systems (like Agentpoint – owned and operated my my good self) and others such as My Desktop and Properties Online)they want the ability to feed that data into your system. Get your developers to spend one week writing a schema to accept this and you will at least get a look in with larger agencies.

4. Dump the Paper Guide – Although an excellent publication and although there might be good money in it if successful, it is old school and doomed for long term failure. Ok, you are now a publishing company and have the excellent trading post, but do not get too smart. The Internet is the future of realestate, not newspaper guides. Agents will only use newspaper in the future for branding, nothing else, so bite you lip, swallow a little pride and dump the guide.

So it will be interesting to see what happens (if anything) over the coming months with Sensis and www.justlisted.com.au, having bucket loads of cash does not give you internet success, it just makes rivals wary.