Five things that caught my eye today:

• Google Local Business Center redesigns itself, making it even easier to update your company’s information into its small business database. Why is this important? Google supplements organic search results with entries from this database, often ahead of even the top ranked destinations (see Google Implements Local Search Results).

• Like Google Alerts “on Steroids”… Trackur.com was created by Marketing Pilgrim Andy Beal and helps you monitor your online identity (see Rise in Internet Use Reinforces the Need for a Cohesive Identity Strategy).

• Twist monitors trends in Twitter. Interesting tool that monitors and compares the volume of daily tweets contain search terms (see Do You Twitter?).

• BuddyPress is a new initiative to turn Wordpress MU into a social networking platform. Like Ning, this may make it even easier to build your own ‘niche’ social network (see Niche Networks and Marketing Real Estate).

• Top Non-ActiveRain Real Estate Blogs. Skewed of course by the data sources, but interesting nonetheless. Kudos to Jon for putting it together every month.

Share on Facebook

searching by blue lilac

Avvo is a new site that just launched to try and take the guess work out of finding a lawyer. The premise of the service really struck a chord with me.

Why is there no such service for real estate?

As a someone who’s getting ready to buy a house, I find it interesting that there is no clear way to go and get find a real estate professional online and be able to judge their competency – before picking up the phone.

Sure, sites like IncredibleAgents.com and HomeThinking.com (for more on HomeThinking read Real Estate 2.0 Market Leader: Homethinking.com) try to do this, but truthfully, I’ve found their search criteria limited, their rankings woefully inadequate (4 or 5 stars doesn’t tell me much) and their databases largely incomplete (at least in Oregon, anyway).

I guess it begs the question then, is it even possible in an industry that sees as much turnover as real estate, to create a comprehensive database of agents and come up with a fair rating algorithm?

Avvo, by way of example, allows you to search by practice area and assigns each individual in their database a proprietary, unbiased Avvo rating. In addition, you can read their complete disciplinary sanction history as well as user-generate ratings and review from past clients.

Surely, in this industry, there should be a similar way to filter an agent search somewhere based on their specialty (condos, or luxury homes, for instance) or length of time in the industry (I want a seasoned vet or young go-getter) or last year’s production, for example.

On the flip side however, as a Realtor or real estate professional – how do you grapple with an online landscape where everyone can now be a critic? I find the issue of online identity utterly fascinating (see How Do You Measure Your Reputation?) and have written about this issue before (see The Rise of the User Review).

But the crux of the issue is this; one negative review on a site like Avvo could sink your entire practice, and if you weren’t listening – you’d be none the wiser.

I had a chance to talk with the guys from MerchantCircle.com again today (see my initial review at MerchantCircle Launches Social Networking for Business) and they’ve since released a whole slew of tools that help small business owners (including Realtors) get a handle on their web presence.

One of the tools I found particularly useful, was their Reputation Management system which aggregates and tracks your profiles on a number of sites (Yelp, Yahoo Local, CitySearch etc.) and informs you when a new rating has been posted about you or your business.

In this day and age, definitely a useful resource.

[Aside: I am working with Charles Turner of the Portland Real Estate Blog, with whom I am very happy - this post is more a general musing.]

Share on Facebook

Ask City launches to take on Windows Live Local, Google Local and Yahoo Local. At first glance, it looks like a solid, competitive offering. I particularly like the ability to take a snapshot (bookmark) of your searches and save them for future use.

Ask City incorporates features from a number of third-party sources but, most interestingly for real estate readers, from Yelp, Judy’s Book and CitySearch. These sources power Ask City’s ratings for each listing it returns. Here’s a listing of Agents & Brokers in my zip code, as an example.

Regular readers will know, I’ve been harping on the growing importance of online reputation management (e.g. Rapleaf’s Real World Feedback System) for a while now. I think Ask’s new product aptly demonstrates this point as it is pushing these rankings/ratings deeper into the mainstream. Agents and brokers are going to have to be aware of the need to monitor their rankings on these search sites as I think they are going to increasingly become important lead generators.

Trulia adds Google Earth (kml) feeds to its search results bringing my dream of conducting a Virtual World real estate search one step closer.

Carnival of Real Estate is up at the Property Monger.

Real Estate Bookmarks is a del.icio.us clone designed specifically for sharing real estate-related bookmarks. Their database seems to be mainly populated with agent sites, though it does seem to work easily enough. I created an account and added my site with little trouble. Honestly, I can’t see the point though, as del.icio.us works just fine for me right now.

Speaking of del.icio.us, you can see my bookmarks on del.icio.us here. I’ve also been trying to get the del.icio.us “thingy” to automatically post my daily links to this blog – but with little success. If any of you can figure it out, let me know.

Finally, if you have an article, blog post or specific tidbit you’d like to share with me, tag it with the ‘tforem’ tag to del.icio.us and I’ll be sure to read it.

Share on Facebook