MLS-Friendly Real Estate Search vs User-Friendly Google-Zillow Search
Last week's events with Google buying Internet Video Startup, YouTube, brought a great deal of buzz, speculation, dire predictions and wow predictions on the high stakes merging of the kings of keyword-relevant search and Internet video content. My favorite comment was by Jim Cramer of Mad Money, who described the $1.65 billion paid by Google for YouTube as a (market valuation) rounding error.
Just as Amazon sets the expectations and standards for buying books (and everything else) online; Google sets the expectations and standards for search (all search) online. Yahoo, the Web's biggest portal, and AOL, the Web's one time biggest portal, are rapidly moving toward Google's look, feel and business model. It's not your older brother's Yahoo, MSN or AOL anymore.
The more Real Estate Search looks, acts and feels like Google Search (aka Zillow), the more customers will expect and demand from all other Real Estate Search platforms (general and vertical; Real Estate and Local). The more Real Estate Search sticks to the Google Playbook, the better they will do. The further Real Estate Search strays from the look, act and feel of Google-like Search, the quicker customers will abandon those sites and not return.
Google (User-Friendly) Search gives searchers more results than they want, in seconds (at most), for free, in a clean format, with simple-text keyword-relevant ads, and without giving up any of their information. In all areas, Google aggressively fights for open information and against the Invisible Web (where all of NAR's MLS's hide their information). Google focuses on the searcher first, drives traffic first, puts the advertiser second and makes billions.
MLS/Real Estate (MLS-Friendly) Search sites (Realtor.com, HouseValues.com, JustListed.com, Broker Sponsored Websites) only give you what Realtors want you to see. (With apologies to Henry Ford, the NAR says: "You can have any kind of Real estate Search you want as long as it's MLS Search.)
MLS Websites only give searchers what they want: with difficulty, begrudgingly for free, in a cluttered often confusing format, with hard sell ads and with the searcher's need to give contact information. NAR/MLS/Real Estate fights aggressively to keep its information hidden, on the Invisible Web. MLS/Real Estate Search thinks first about selling the house; everything else is second. MLS/Real Estate Search brands their platform as sales-first; trusted information provider is a distant second. How can you tell when a Real Estate Sales Agent's Website is lying?...
Will there ever be a user-friendly national MLS? On its own, will Real Estate ever provide Google-like search? Real Estate and Google are on 2 different planets. They're going in 2 different directions.
Location, Location, Location isn't Traffic, Traffic, Traffic. Real Estate 2.0 is Real Estate on the Internet, and Real Estate is fighting every advance offered by Google, Zillow and all the other Real Estate Search 2.0 providers.
An Inman Blogger postulates: "Though, it could be more interesting to see a an actual brokerage company acquire Zillow." Zillow sells ads. Brokers sell houses. Zillow's ads make the invisible visible. Brokers make the visible (home data) invisible. Zillow's magic is how they do it for free. The broker's magic is how they get 6%.
Zillow is on the speed dial of Google, MSN, Yahoo, LendingTree, and 3 Venture Capitalists ($52 Million). There was rampant speculation last week that Zillow was Google's next target. My Zillow contacts wouldn't answer my questions about it.
MLS/Real Estate Search is on the Department of Justice's (DOJ's) speed dial. Zillow will have Google-like real Estate Search before the NAR is through with the DOJ. The DOJ wouldn't comment on any ongoing investigations, either.
Wouldn't it be better for our buyers and sellers, to whom we owe due diligence and the other elements of agency, to open up our data to all the search engines and provide our clients with the best and broadest free advertising? Or does our self-interest, hiding our data, to drive every prospect to our Website to see our data; cloud our vision and our clients' view of the biggest evolution and revolution in Real Estate?
How long can we fight the Search Engines, the Department of Justice and our ethics?
Happy Searching.
WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing
In the Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota region, we are very open with our data. Almost no broker requires a user login to get listing details, and by January 1st we are going to be publishing many fields from the Sold data for 2 years of listings.
Our proprietary system allows us to control the QUALITY and FRESHNESS of the data. If we push all our data to all search tools, how do we keep control of the quality and freshness of that data?
Some MLSs may still be very paranoid of their data, but I can speak proudly when I say that you can be very open with your MLS data, benefit the consumer, and still protect the integrity of the business.
Posted by: Aaron Dickinson | October 30, 2006 at 10:17 PM