Will Zillow, with all its Real Estate data and Search Engine connections, come to dominate Real Estate Search the way Google dominates general Search? As John Battelle predicted in his book, Search, Google is already loosing 3 Vertical Search battles (or Battelles): in blogging to Technorati, in video sharing to YouTube and in social networking to MySpace. Will Google soon loose the battle in Real Estate Search too? Even now, on my blog posts, I put Technorati Tags, not Google Tags. Will my home listings, posted to the MLZ, have Zillow Tags, not Google Tags? Is Vertical the next great Search frontier? Is Vertical the new Horizontal?
All the major Search Engines are struggling with the issues of Local Search, Vertical Search, and Tagged Search (the Semantic Web). Could Zillow's model, with all street addresses (Local search), with all property data (Vertical Search), and with an MLZ containing a Web page for every address (Tagged Search), be the answer in all three areas? How better to deliver local ads, for Realtors and all other home-sale related businesses, then on the address-hooked Web pages of every home in any area, in every area?
The MLZ will allow Realtors to 1-click upload their listings to the MLZ, their MLS and Realtor.com. For Realtors it will be easier to first upload their listings to the MLZ, which then pushes the listings out to all the other Real Estate sites. Thus, all 900+ MLS's and all Real Estate data will be standardized on one Internet platform, immediately; and for free. The MLZ will offer the most sophisticated Internet technology to Realtors; and for free. Contextual ads on the Web pages will pay for everything. Kodak will sue the MLZ for stealing the slogan: "You click the button. We do the rest." The MLZ might even pay Realtors or home owners a fee for their information, as Marc Davison of OnBoard LLC has predicted.
The MLZ will have state of the art maps and mashups of homes for sale. With 1 click the prospective home buyer will have a mashup of all the homes meeting their search criteria in their target area. The MLZ will feature aerial-photographic and schematic maps and will soon include street level photos for all listed and non-listed properties. Since the MLZ has an inventory of all residences, the home owner would just have to click the icon, "Sell My Home" and it will trigger a cascade of property information and sale options.
The MLZ will also push listing information to its strategic partners; the top general Search Engines; Google, Yahoo! MSN, AOL, Ask, etc; just as it does to Yahoo! now. Zillow, with its great size, targeted traffic and relevant links, will top all organic real estate searches on all Search Engines. And, just like Google, Zillow won't have to pay for advertising. The MLZ will be great for home buyers and sellers, FSBO's and even agents. The MLZ will level the playing field for the little guy, all little guys. The MLZ will offer FSBO's, agents and small brokers equal access, state -of-the-art tools and a free Real Estate information platform; the way Google offers all comers (outside of China) a free general search platform. Zillow is looking more and more like Google, only better.
The MLZ will not be good for the NAR, MLS's, Realtor.com and your father's other old school Real Estate Search Engines. What Realtors now pay their local associations for, often an inadequate MLS, will be a state of the art MLZ; and it will be free. With data and tools so readily available in Real Estate the entry bar is lowered for the little guy and raised for the Search Engines.
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