Google Muscles into Real Estate Listings
I was getting on a plane this morning so I was only able to tweet this news.
Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting sums it up best.
Now, today, search engine land reports that Google has taken this one step further to include a unique page for every listing that includes photos, a map (including Street View) property details, directions, transit information and more. It’s a listing detail page, basically.
I wrote back in July that “the game’s about to get interesting” (see Google Gets Serious about Real Estate Search). Today, with the launch of Place Pages for real estate, it just did.
It’s live right now in Australia. So we’ll wait and see when and if it gets announced State-side. But if I were Move or Trulia or any of the other property search portals worldwide, I’d be nervously crossing my fingers this stays in the southern hemisphere.
Read more about it at search engine land.
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Chris Dowell | Nov 22, 2009 | Reply
I like the new Google look. Google base just seemed to not work.
Bruce | Nov 23, 2009 | Reply
hhmm..i still have this question that why is google taking interest in real estate only??
jim | Nov 28, 2009 | Reply
Google already lists real estate for sale if you look up the address in maps and links to the broker website when you ask for more details. What they are doing over there though is indeed taking it to a whole new level. I wonder if real estate agents/owners will be able to “claim” their listing/property ala trulia/zillow.
Shawn Feeney | Nov 30, 2009 | Reply
Google is in the business of being a resource. I think their plan is to create a new market in real estate and then service it.
They will most likely offer services to the general public for free and sell leads to real estate professional and other interested parties.
Clemmons Homes for Sale | Dec 1, 2009 | Reply
I agree with Shawn. They are providing information as a resource, and will probably try to sell leads to interested parties and increase their advertising revenue with the expanded market niche.
Kris Keener | Dec 4, 2009 | Reply
Whether it’s announced or not, it’s live in the US. I searched for one of our listings and the more info link takes me to a Place Page for it.
The Place Page has ads on it. I suspect this is another way for Google to sell ads. They know real estate is a high traffic search and listing details get eyeballs. They can traffic how many click throughs were being sent offsite just as well as we can traffic how many came to us. Now they keep that click through and serve ads up on it.
It’s going to reduce the click throughs to the sites that are providing the data to them. Will people pull their feeds to Google because the click throughs drop? Or did we all set ourselves up by taking advantage of the traffic from Google and have now made them a place you have to be to please your sellers and keep up with the competition?
Overland Park Homes for Sale | Dec 5, 2009 | Reply
Off the top of my head I can’t think of one Google endevro that sells leads. They are in adverting, I think ultimately they want to capture as many Real Estate Buyer’s eyes as possible so they can sell advertising spots on the Real Estate pages. IMO.
Eric Steinbach | Dec 9, 2009 | Reply
Seems like Google really wants to dabble in everything. Guess when you are as profitable as they are you can do pretty much whatever you want.
Eric Steinbach – Kelowna Real Estate