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ERA Lands On Zillow, One Small Step For A Search Engine, One Giant Step Toward A National MLS

Where were you when you first heard Lady Di was killed?

Where were you when you first heard Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon?

Where were you when you first heard ERA set foot on Zillow?

On Wednesday, 10/24/07, Zillow, the Real Estate Search Engine with the Google Business Model, signed its first bulk load property listing agreement with ERA Franchise Systems LLC. Someone, besides 4 Venture Capital Firms (with 87MM $ votes) must be getting it. But getting what?

Isn't Zillow going to take ERA's data, approach all their homeowners and sell their houses on the Internet at a reduced "Redfin-like-rate", as we've always feared they'd do?

Won't Zillow pull a HomeStore/Move.com-ActiveRain maneuver, make a deal, get the data, pull out at the last minute, then offer a similar service?

Has ERA gone over to the Dark Side?

Have we gone from:

• Zillo-noia: Fear Zillow will steal all our jobs, to
• Zillo-phobia: Fear Zillow will steal all our data, to
• Zillo-tropism: Posting our data on Zillow, to
• Zillo-philia: Loving our listings and advertising on Zillow? 

Doesn't Zillow want all of our commissions, not just a part of our advertising budgets?

The only money in Real Estate is in selling houses, not in selling advertising, right?

What if Zillow got control of all our MLS listings and put them on the Web? Then opened all those listings up to all the Search Engines and even pushed them out to all the Search Engines. And Zillow didn't charge us for it. What if there was one Website with all the homes for sale?

• Doesn't my broker, my MLS and my Realtor.com do that for me already?
• Don't I need my broker, my MLS and my Realtor.com?
• I can't upload my own listings to Zillow myself, can I?
• What could I do with all my office fees, Realtor Assn/MLS fees, and NAR/Realtor.com fees?

Do we really want Zillow to control the National MLS? Won't it be "The Mother of all MLSs"? Will we have to change the name from the "MLS" to the "MLZ", "Multiple Listing Zillow"?

By what Christmas will the Inman Blog post:

"Yes, Virginia, there is a National MLS."?

Posted by: Cliff Jacobson

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

The Future of the Ad Model For Online Real Estate

The days when you could give away online content (however great), throw up some Google Ads, rake in oodles (or Goodles [about a Gillion]) of money, and sell your site to the highest Web 2.0 bidder are gone. In fact they never were.

VCs have voted with their risk taking bucks in verticals like YouTube (Video), MySpace, FaceBook (Social Networking) and Zillow (Real Estate); but the jury is still out on the question, "Can we drive Google-Like click rates with great content." All current evidence is shouting a deafening "NO!"

What's needed are new/different ad models.

FaceBook, instead of selling to Google, Yahoo or MSN for their $1 Billion market valuation, decided to stay private and try to generate ad revenue on its own, with ads, different from Google Ads. A recent ad CTR (Click-Through-Rate) for a Social Networking site was 1/200, well below Google's reported 1/8). FaceBook is using its millions in venture cash to find a new ad model effective on Social Networking sites. Will it? Maybe.

YouTube sold their traffic to Google for $1.65 Billion. YouTube had never made a profit. YouTube did have $100 MM worth of technology and $1.55 MMM of traffic ad potential. YouTube needs a new ad model too.

Zillow is an interesting Real Estate Vertical. Zillow is in Real Estate, but sells houses. Zillow was first to market with a Google/Network-Media Business Model for Real Estate:
       Free Content (Home Valuations)> Drive Traffic > Sell Ads
Will Zillow's visitors, looking for a home's value, click on general Google Ads? Will they come back and click after the purchase offer? After the closing? After the move in? Zillow just got its 3rd round of funding for $30 MM. Richard Barton, Zillow's CEO, said they would use the new cash to develop their site and to implement a sales/ad program to local agents, plumbers, etc. I hear the frustration of the ineffectiveness of Google's AdSense revenue for vertical sites.

Ad-funded vertical sites like YouTube, FaceBook and Zillow need to develop ad models effective for their area. Google's keyword-relevant ads just don't have the click-through-rates on vertical sites to justify their revenue predictions and their VC market valuations.

Google, a general search engine, provides need fulfillment. You go to Google to find out the info you want by clicking on links. Google provides keyword relevant ads, the first of which look an awful like the organic lists which follow.

You go to a Vertical for specific information. Clicking on ads, no matter how keyword relevant, requires the added step of need generation to incent ad clicking. Visitors on FaceBook and MySpace pages aren't there to click on ads.

"All Real Estate is Local".

Google and the other Search Engines still struggle with the "Local Search Problem"; for both content-delivery and ad-delivery. So far the national algorithms of Google and Zillow haven't scaled well local. Bad for Google. Terrible for Zillow.

All Virtual Real Estate is Local. 

Good Luck Zillow. I hope you don't need it.

Posted by: Cliff Jacobson

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

New Name, Same Old Tricks. Move.com and HomeStore

Move.com, the Real Estate Rock Star formerly known as Homestore.com, and the supplier of NAR's Realtor.com, is up to its old tricks and back in legal hot water. Some Real Estate search providers never learn.

Move made a deal to buy ActiveRain.com (the Real Estate Blog Service), got ActiveRain's account information, then backed out at the last minute. Move.com now offers its own ActiveRain-Like service. Sounds like the kind of behavior that got HomeStore and their executives into felony-strength legal trouble before.

Will the NAR take a stand on Move.com's action? Or will Move.com get away with another general- betray-us action? Does Move.com have any relationship with MoveOn.org? Ugh!

Doesn't Real Estate have enough problems with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice(DOJ)? Do we really need to go and take on the Blogesphere?

Haven't Realtors been compared to used car salesmen too much? Let Move.com run the UsedCarSales.com Website. Why doesn't the NAR turn back the miles on its contract for Realtor.com.

If we're best judged by the company we keep, maybe we should stop hanging out with HomeStore, Cendant and Department of Justice types.

Just because Zillow beat the NAR, Move.com and Realtor.com to blogging and to founding the Blog Carnival of Real Estate (and Zillow is free to post our listings) doesn't mean we have to go beat up on the Real Estate blogging world.

Will our NAR dues and Realtor.com fees go up to pay Move.com's legal fees to fight ActiveRain?

Why doesn't the NAR just:

• Dump Move.com (back out of our 1000+ page contract with them = Move.com Playbook)
• Restart negotiations with Google to run Realtor.com
• Let Google sell relevant ads around all our content
• Let Google set up the National MLS and
• Provide all the services we Realtors need
• FOR FREE?

Give 'em Hell and ActiveRain on their parade. 

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing