Google’s journey into the real estate search space became much more visible yesterday with the announcement of a real estate search feature for Google Maps. It’s being piloted in Australia.
How it works
Agents, franchises and marketing groups, and listing portals can upload their listings to Google Base as either a formatted data feed or via the Google Base Data API. Listings are then displayed on a map when a user conducts a search using Google Maps.
Search results display a marker indicating the location of a property that matches the search criteria. Results change dynamically as the search parameters are amended. The More Info link provides the viewer with a thumbnail property image, access to Google Street View, a handy directions tool, a search for other local businesses, and importantly for agents, a link to their web site.
The new real estate search feature for Google Maps
Unlike search facilities on some of the major portals, Map search allows users to search on any phrase. For example, a buyer might perform an initial search for “character homes in Victoria Park” and this would produce matches highly relevant to the person’s interests.
Where a listing is uploaded from several sources (agent, real estate institute, portal) Google will provide a link to each source. Which link to click will be up to the person doing the search.
What it means for agents
With the introduction of real estate search for Maps, Google provides agents with a way to significantly increase visibility for themselves and their properties and to drive direct traffic to their web sites. Aside from some setup costs it’s all free.
Google Maps could be a game changer for online property marketing. Up to now agents have relied on portals to aggregate property listings; and they’ve paid heavily for the privilege. In the first instance they pay hefty monthly contracts and are up-sold advertising packages that are fueled by greed and force agents to play a zero-sum game. Second, by relying on portals to do their property marketing they’ve ensured their website rarely reach top spot – and often not even the first page – on a Google search. Thirdly, portals have designed their sites to reduce, rather than increase, the volume of direct traffic flowing to agents’ sites.
But with Google Maps things are different. For a start, there is no fee. Unlike the preferential positioning achieved through advertising packages on the big portals, any mention of a property on a Google Map is based solely on its relevance to a person’s search query; and that makes for a far better search experience for the end user. Finally Google wants to drive direct traffic to the most relevant website. That works best for the person doing the search. And in the long run it works best for Google.
For these reasons loading properties to Google makes perfect sense. It’s good for buyers and renters because it adds another way for them to find relevant property information. It works for sellers because it exposes their property to a wider audience. And it works for agents because it drives direct traffic to their web site.
What to do next
- Ensure all the properties on your site contain an accurate street address.
- Include relevant keywords in the text of your advertisements.
- Get your web developer to create an upload to Google Maps via the Google Base Data API.
- Start uploading. Don’t wait around for your favourite portal to do it for you. You want direct traffic remember.
- Add your business to Google Maps at the Google Local Business Center.
- Start a Google AdWords campaign targeting micro-market segments. Using the example above you might create an ad campaign for the keywords “character home Victoria Park” with the text of the ad appealing to anyone interested in selling a character home in Victoria Park. These ads can be set to only appear on Google Maps, right where a seller is likely to look.
It’s important this message gets out to all agents so, if you found value in this article, please share it with your friends.
