WebHomeUSABlog: Street Advisor, The Yelp of Real Estate? Zillow, The Google of Real Estate?

On 8/1/07 StreetAdvisor.com launched many new features in their attempt to become "The Yelp of Real Estate". StreetAdvisor.com is the first major social networking venture into Real Estate, offering user generated realty content down to the street level. StreetAdvisor, based in Melbourne, Austrailia (not Florida), is backed by an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

A somewhat similar idea for presenting neighborhood reviews is offered by Outside.in, which aggregates geo-targeted blog content. Outside.in has funding from 3 Venture Capital firms, including Union Square Ventures, Milestone Venture Partners and Village Ventures.

All the commotion revolves around the potential solutions to the problem of Local Search:

Local Product Search
Local Service Search
Local Ad Need for Local Advertisers to most effectively target their advertising.

If Google could deliver Local Search Ads like they deliver national and global search ads, there's another Holy Grail out there.

It's interesting to look at the business/revenue models for these start-ups. There are a number of ways a Website can generate income:

Sell Keyword-Relevant Ads, like Google Ads, through an intermediate like a Google AdSense Account.
Sell Banner Ads and Sponsorships yourself or through an agency.
Affiliate Programs,ie: Amazon.com
Subscriptions: Angie's List, Realtor.com

Google proved the Keyword Relevant Ad Strategy can be very profitable for general search, but the jury is still out for profitability with the Real Estate search engines, like Zillow, Trulia and the other Real Estate verticals. Will one of them ever become "The Google of Real Estate"?

Yelp's strategy is to offer free local service/business evaluations. These evaluations drive traffic, but unlike Google which monetizes the click stream with keyword relevant auction ads, Yelp tries to sell monthly ad and sponsorship packages to the businesses mentioned in the reviews. (Yelp has $16 million in funding from Bessemer Ventures and Benchmark Capital.)

If Street Advisor models itself on Yelp, they'll need a big expensive sales force too. Google can't yet supply the most appropriate local ads to make local sites effective with the Google Model.

Two ways to advertise on StreetAdvisor are: "Premium" Billboards, or banner-like sponsorships, which appear on all street pages in a city. There will also be "Base" sponsorships, 2 available per city, which are compared to Google AdSense.