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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I’ve been wondering for a long time when Google would make a more sophisticated step into the real estate space. We might be seeing the first signs.

Much like Trulia, Zillow, Frontdoor and others, they’ve been quietly suctioning in real estate listings into Google Base over the last year or so (see Trulia Lands the Big One). They first rolled those out into the organic search results when they populated a link on geographic search terms — e.g. portland real estate — to a generic housing search page (see Another Hint at Google Real Estate?).

Now they seem to have quietly pushed that feature up to Google Maps as well (see Google Maps Adds Real Estate Search) and added a search for ‘real estate’ on the main page of that site. To reveal it click on “show search options” and then choose ‘real estate’ from the drop down menu.

Unfortunately, listings (depending on the Metro area) are pretty sparse right and are mostly drawn from 3rd party sources like Postlets. One could imagine how this could quickly fill up should they turn on the firehouse of data they’ve been accumulating from their broker relationships.

Google Maps is a product I find myself using more and more in my real estate searches. Usually when I’ve found a home I’m interested in (whether it’s on Trulia, Zillow or Roost), the very first thing I do is click over to a new tab, Google the address and pull it up on Maps.

From there, I can get a clear view of the street layout (access to freeways etc.), the terrain (how close is it to a park). I love Street View which gives me a first person look at the neighborhood. I start Googling local business to see how far the closest pub, pizza joint, drycleaners, etc. is from the home. I can also pull up instant directions to see how long my commute might be.

Sure I could do some of this on the originating source’s site. But like with all my other Google searches, I love the speed and clean look and feel to Maps. Now if it just had all the listings, I could just cut out the intermediary step (T/Z/R) …

In more Maps news, Google LatLong is reporting that Youtube videos are now showcased on Maps if they are geocoded and/or associated with a local business. From their blog.

Local business owners can easily add YouTube videos along with other content such as business details, photos, and descriptions to their listings. To do so, simply upload your videos to YouTube and ensure that the ‘embed’ option is turned on. Then, associate your video to your business listing through the Local Business Center.

Created a video profile of yourself and your business? Wondering how you can promote it? Here’s a pretty clear step you can take. Make sure you’ve added yourself and your video to the Google Local Business Center.

(h/t Ubertor Real Estate Blog)

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Not to be outdone by that other 800lb gorilla in the real estate space (see Zillow Asks What’s For Sale in your Hood?), Google has been quietly rolling out improvements to its real estate search and Google Base platforms and left a cryptically vague note on their official blog today that serves as a reminder to the industry that they aren’t sitting still as the online real estate space continues to evolve.

They’ve been on a quiet roll lately, methodically signing up brokers willing to feed their listings directly into the classifieds platform (see Windermere and Google Base Team Up and Trulia Lands the Big One) and it looks like they’re taking baby steps towards providing a real consumer search interface or portal for those listings – something that’s been hinted at in the past by the Mountain View giant (see Google Getting Deeper Into Real Estate Search?).

Right now they’re holding up short of calling it Google Real Estate, rather opting for the more generic terms ‘Housing search’. But is it only a matter of time?

They’ve had drop down menus on the results pages for searches like “Portland real estate” for a while, but what’s really interesting is the development that been going on as you click through.

The Housing Search page has undergone a pretty radical evolution since I last saw it, morphing closer and closer to the now almost generic user interface used by Trulia, Shackprices and other search sites. Sure, it lacks their flair and feels much more utilitarian, but it gets the job done. Standard features like the option to output the search as a RSS feed are included and are welcome (oddly, no KML/Google Earth output however).

As their Google Base inventory levels swell, and more traffic follows – real estate search becomes a much more lucrative market for them to monetize (likely through advertising – maybe even aping Zillow’s EZads?). I wouldn’t put it past them to flip the switch one day and push out a whole new portal.

Just like they did with their MyMaps release today, they’re definitely not opposed to taking out companies that have built businesses their on the API (see Social Mapping for the Masses with MyMaps). The folks at Trulia should be paying close attention.

More from Screenwerk and the Inman Blog.

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