For the past few years, many have watched the landscape of the Real Estate business change drastically.  It has been transforming from a closed data system that only those with access to the MLS had the keys to unlock, to an open system where most listings can be found just about anywhere by anyone.  Buyers can now find listings on sites such such as Trulia, Zillow, and yes, Google Maps, without having to unlock those doors to the MLS data.  I have felt for a long time now that Google had the data and many of the pieces in place to be a huge player in the Real Estate space.  Some recent announcements this year point even more towards that.

Improving Real Estate Search On Google Maps

On July 6th, 2009, Google announced that real estate listings would now display within a map with a one-box that would take you to real estate listings when users search for property related queries.

Google Retires The “One at a Time” Feature

On July 30th, 2009, Google announced that they would no longer allow manually entered single listings.  Maybe I read into it wrong, but at the time of the announcement I translated that into Google wanting to target the large data providers.

Place Pages for Google Maps

In September, 2009, Google launched Place Pages.  There are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks, and cities all over the world.

More Real Estate in Google Maps

On October 29th, Google announced some changes to Google Maps that would make it easier for you to find listings. “First of all, we’ve made it easier to find real estate listings. Now, you can simply select “Real Estate” from the ‘More’ button on the top right of any Google Map to discover listings.”

Integration of real estate listings with Place Pages

On November 19th, Google mentioned the integration of real estate listings with Place Pages, saying “Now clicking the “more info” link next to a listing takes you to a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: photos, inspection times, videos, details, a Street View preview and nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to quickly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing.”

Google to Acquire Yelp?

On December 17th, 2009, rumors were flying around that Google was in discussions to acquire Yelp.  Acquiring Yelp, in my opinion, would allow Google to enhance its real estate portal with ratings and other localized information.

Google to Acquire Trulia?

On December 18th, 2009, rumors surfaced that Google is in discussions to acquire Trulia.  “According to sources close to the situation, along with its pending bid for Yelp, Google has been in on-again, off-again acquisition talks with Trulia”.

Is it just me here or does this look like a pattern? I personally feel that if Google purchases Yelp and Trulia, this will be another game changer in the Real Estate space.  What will this do to the MLS?  Will the many MLS’s be as important or will Google eventually be the main source for real estate search and data?  After all, the MLS’s don’t have all the listing data.  They don’t have FSBO listings, foreclosures, or other listings from Agents that don’t belong to the MLS.

Why Is Twitter Good For Communication?

Today we suffered from an outage on a few of our primary sites because our server company, Rackspace, went down in one of their data centers.  My first step to address the issue was going to myrackspace.com to submit a ticket.  That didn’t work because it was down too.  Next, I tried calling our account contact phone number.  Busy signal!  Thirdly, I tried calling the support 800 number.  Busy too!  So what did I do after that?  I went to Twitter http://search.twitter.com and searched for “rackspace”. Instantly, I was presented with thousands of tweets of others complaining about their servers/sites being down.

Rackspace Is Down - Twitter Updates

I knew at that point it was not something that was specific to our servers.  I then went to @scobleizer’s profile and his tweets confirmed the outage.  He also tweeted a couple of references to check for status.

While Twitter didn’t solve the problem of our servers being down, it sure did take me out of complete panic mode because I was at least able to see what was going on.

Thanks for saving my sanity today, Twitter!

With the recent changes Google implemented that shows tweets directly within the search results, it is more important than ever that you think about what you tweet. Your tweets now have a chance of showing up when someone searches for your brand, name, product, service, etc., and these tweets show up at the very top of search results. This means they will most likely get clicked and viewed before your web pages and other content.  Following are some key points you should consider when tweeting:

Are basic conversations you have on Twitter going to take away from your conversion?

A basic @reply tweet like, “Hey thanks for drinks tonight”, or something similar, may show up in a Google search when potential clients are searching for your brand.  Does your brand, service or product have anything to do with going out for drinks?  If not, what will your clients and customers think? Is this really the first impression you want to leave them with?

Are links you post sending your potential clients AWAY from you?

Now this is a big one, and one that I am trying to evaluate for myself as well.  I post links all the time on Twitter to other resources/websites.  These tweets with links now have the potential to show up in the top of Google when searching for your brand/name.  Think of what could possibly happen if a user, searching for your brand, see’s your tweets at the top of the search results and clicks on the link you tweeted.  You just may lose that client because they now clicked on a link that is associated with your name but actually takes them to a page that has nothing to do with your company.

Are your non-business tweets hurting you?

Again, another one I struggle with, since I tweet both about business related stuff and non-business related stuff.  While the non-business related stuff is always clean and friendly, it is not targeted to my brand and I am pretty sure if a potential client searches Google for my brand and sees these types of tweets at the top of the results, they will be completely confused.

Following is a screen shot of a search on one of our brand names that illustrates some of these concerns.

Tweets showing up in Google

While I have no concerns of my conversation with Kathy and I think she has built a solid Twitter presence for herself, I have to think about how a potential client would respond when seeing this in Google search results for my business.  Will they click Kathy’s name and be taken to her Twitter account?  That would be great for Kathy, but could the potential client misunderstand that Kathy’s Twitter account is the Go Smart account?  Now imagine if a conversation you have with someone who doesn’t have a solid or professional Twitter profile shows up in Google for your brand.  Imagine if the potential client clicks on that person’s name and see’s some not-so-appealing stuff.

Now let’s look at the second example.  Again, a tweet that I have no concerns of and one that actually links to a very valuable blog post.  BUT again, as a business owner, I have to consider how this may confuse a potential client or send them AWAY from our company and services.  A potential client will most likely click on this link and be taken to a page that has nothing to do with Go Smart Solutions or our services.  Can we say “confusion”?

You have to remember that you and I and whoever else is reading this is probably aware of and understand these latest changes, but your everyday person (clients, consumers) are in a completely different world and have no idea about this stuff.  All they know is, all of a sudden, these scrolling results are now sometimes showing at the top of their searches.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Is Real Time Search REALLY a Good Idea?
• Are You Ready For Google Search Changes
• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

I must admit when I first starting hearing about real time search, I was a little nervous. The first thing that came to mind was, “This is going to be an easy way for spammers to blast us with their junk”. However, I convinced myself that the big search engines like Google and Bing would have things in place to filter this stuff out. I was right and I was wrong. I was right to fear that real time search would open up some bad stuff. I was wrong to think that the search engines would stop it.

Rae Hoffman, CEO and Co-Founder of Outspoken Media, began playing with the new feature and discovered some alarming results.  Watch this video and you will see that this is a major issue.  The thing that scares me the most is when Rae touched on safety concerns for children online.  Please spread this video so it gets the attention of the search engines and hopefully they either remove the Twitter real time stream or they fix/filter the junk.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Are You Ready For Google Search Changes
• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?

Have you been paying attention to the changes in the search engine space? Are you ready for these changes? On Monday, Google unveiled its real-time search features. One of the features of this real-time search will be a dynamic scrolling view of updates from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other sources. Watch the Google video of how this works:

Google’s real-time results are also pulling in other data, which includes latest updates from blogs, videos, news sites, and even images. The screen shot below shows a search on “Tiger Woods” and how some of these sources are mixed directly in on the first page of Google’s search results.

If you are an internet marketer, you need to be aware of these changes and create videos, optimize images in your content, participate in blogging, and participate in real-time social networks if you want to stay on top.

See my other posts about similar topics

• Google Search Sidebar
• Twitter is Important For SEO
• This is for all of those long-tail SEO skeptics
• Have you seen Google’s new search options?