Not much of a shock here but this could be the biggest thing of 2007 and should cause meetings across Australia at the highest levels of the real estate portal industry long before it launches. I found this at an Ajax site and it looks real to me and it is an obvious extension to Google search by looking at the screen shots. My thinking is yes!
But how will realestate.com.au and domain.com.au act if it is in fact true? Doubtful they will do anything at first, but once agents started getting true results then I am sure agency prices will drop across the board.
Is this Google Real Estate Beta? Looks at some of these screen shots
Users search Google as per normal but obviously keywords used will bring results and refinement of these results.
You can see you can refine and sort results by price, bedroom bathroom, most recent etc.
Seems simple doesn’t it. I think this will force all agencies to begin making sure all of their sites are built to optimise listings in this search engine (this is called open standards) and you will see in the future I think that Google will also eventually build (or buy) its own application for adding listings.
So what does this mean for you – the agent?
Make sure your new development is built using open standards. This means basically creating your site in a manner that identiaifes every string of data for searching, storage and optimisation. A good start would be development in HTML, XML, RSS and with a MySQL Database using CSS (Cascading Stylesheets)
There are a number of resources online. It also means dumping any Flash or pretty VR Tours that can make it hard for information to be identified. Basically a site developed correctly would be able to be indexed by every search engine and syndication system available today.
This may be a hoax, I am not sure, but mark my words if Google do real estate in search, fast to follow will be Yahoo and MSN and this will basically spell the end for big portals pulling money from agents. I think we will first see Google pulling data from websites and then follow with their own systems. I wonder if major portals will block indexing from these sites?
It makes perfect sense for these companies to do real estate as it is one of the most popular searches on the Internet!
53 Comments
snoop
Its been talked about for some time,launching google base here in au.
Agreed on the open standards requirement for websites.
All in all as long as google drives traffic to a paid for listing on REA or Domain its got to be good.
Its my bet Google have been in Discussions with all the major players.
Will people go to a google realestate site over a specialty site prob not.
I think if they do launch some of these sites will have to start building more value for consumers than just listings mixed with vast numbers of ads though.
Peter
Thanks Snoop
Couple of things
1. Listings mixed with ads? I don’t think you could do any worse than what is currently here!
2. Speed – It will be lightning fast (results not maps)
3. If it had majority of agents and listigns why would anyone go anywhere else, they already use it for search?
Brian
Google’s G Base search refinement has been live for more than a year in the U.S. Nothing really new here…
Peter
Brian? Nothing new here? This is NOT Google Base at all, Google Base looks and works completely different. Go and have a look and compare,. this is Google Search with additions….
Sam
I don’t think NineMSN will join in as they make too much out of realestate.com.au – but Google are different, if they have a go at this it could pull the rug out from under the large portals. They think they’re big ? just watch Google gobble them up for breakfast. Google may wish to consider what the portals pay them in ad words fees but for Google that’s a drop in the bucket that wouldn’t even register on the radar.
If Myhome can take Realestate’s place on NineMSN and Google wades in to the fight realestate.com may well be on the skids, it will take a little while but the decline would be inevitable.
Peter
Nice post Sam, thanks for stopping by. Look I don’t think REA’s position is under threat at all but I do think we will see a steadying of pricing, maybe a halt to the 7/8% annual increases. Over time if any of these portals do have an effect it will mean a drop in pricing. IfGoogle do release a real estate system then Yahoo and MSN (not Ninemsn as they are too small) would both join in and all of them would be 100% free for agents!
So this alone would lead to lower prices for agents, but also a problem for agents who do not develop sites in Open Standards!
Paul Krayven
For this to work properly, the search companies would have to allow use to send them xml data. Using their current crawler technology to find and display listings, google will fill up fast with incorrect pricing and properties that have already sold which will be a headache for vendors and agencies alike.
Peter
Paul, if Google sent out an XML rules document for allowing listings from agents websites in search results and each agent had to conform, how many do you think wouldn’t?
My guess is only the ones that dont know and dont care!
Sam
Google have the technology to get around that, but the agents would need techs to set it up. Perhaps Google will run this as a side business, agents would rather pay Google than the portals.
I don’t think REA’s position is at all secure, they have a sizable lead and plenty of money but hat still doesn’t stop Domain (for instance) from legitimately claiming more traffic in NSW
I think REA are struggling to find new revenue sources, their web site is now maxed out with ads and it’s become a damn nuisance when trying to search, especially the pop ups.
This is the Internet and the ground can move from under you in seconds flat ie: how would you like to be a mapping company today trying to sell to web sites ? Yet this time last year they were king of the hill.
Peter
And what if they made it so that you had to place code in your site and go to Google to see if it is compliant? All of these problems are kitty littler compared to the results it would generate for agents and google!
Sam
There would be a whole new industry surface, Google accredited techs setting up everyone’s site to comply, not just real estate sites either.
I’ve thought for years they should get into this side of things.
Not SEO (search engine optimisation) but setting up sites from different industries to dispaly their content properly in the new format as per your screen shots.
Paul Krayven
If google supply an API, the agencies that don’t care would be silly 🙂 I really hope they do go down this path, I for one look forward to it.
And Sam’s mention of pop up ads, my god I hate them, who ever thought up that idea wants shooting! 🙂
Peter
RE: Pop Ups
They are finished now that IE7 and Firefox 2 block them, however still so many people have not upgraded their browsers. My biggest hate is the pop over, ninemsn seems to think it is fun to annoy people….
Paul Krayven
Ahh, sorry I did mean the pop overs.
Mike
Hi Guys
I have asked this question a few times now, but no one seems to have an idea. How many of Australia’s agents are already XML capable?
Which of the software vendors here are providing them with XML capabilities as standard?
Are the agents that are XML ready turning it on.
Google has a history of doing things algorithmically, they will not want to do it by manual tuning.
Its not a big stretch for them to be able to work out how to recognise price, postcode and the address info around it. You will find that most of the agents are following a reasonably uniform pattern about displaying results.
I would imagine they have the ability to be able to do this reasonably easily and they don’t care about agent listing fees, they just want to own another massive advertising platform.
Also interested in any stats that anyone has on how many properties are listed with domain and REA at any given time.
feedmehomes.com.au has started crawling agent sites and we are having some success but still have a long way to go and feedback you guys have on the quantity of properties in the market at any given time would be great
Thanks
Mike
Peter
Mike
I would say around 1 or 2% would be fully compliant, if that, have not see any as yet (not even my clients)…
I have been in development for about 12 months now with my new system which will be ready in a few months time, we have finished the system and are now porting sites (current clients across to it) The new system is deep RSS Ready and XHTML, XML compliant. with CSS style sheets.
As for my competitors I would assume any of them could be XML compliant (as we all are pretty much) , RSS XHTML ready out of the box is an entirely different story and from what I know none are.
But check with the vendors to my right. It takes some guts to do all of these things as a company because you have to get away from being proprietary, which basically means clients could come and go as they please and not many executives like that idea!
Also Mike are you related to feedmehomes.com.au in any way? If so be fair and let everyone know with your posts!
Shaun Di Gregorio
Good afternoon
I work for realestate.com.au
Fascinating developments….I can’t help but marvel at “Sam’s” various assertions… and that domain have legitimately more traffic in NSW; this is simply not the case and is quantified by both Nielson Net Ratings and Hitwise, the two accepted Internet measurement tools …is there something you
Sam
Hi Shaun,
Domain made that claim in advertising to the agents and there’s been no retraction from them so I assume you haven’t challenged it and it must be correct.
Have a good weekend yourself !
Sam
Here’s the link – looks like……..yes it does say No1 in NSW
http://www.business2.com.au/2006/12/11/domain-number-one-in-nsw/
Mike
Sorry guys
I thought I made it clear a few posts ago, I own feedmehomes.com.au
We started developing just before Christmas. Still coding, but have managed to crawl multiple sites and present this in a Trulia style site (except slightly cleaner)
Feel free to ask questions, as I have made clear before its still very much an experiment, but we have managed to take a few steps forward in the last week with the first few thousand properties being crawled from agents sites and presented on a maps interface.
Obviously we have a long way to go, it would be interesting to hear everyones feedback about the challenges, how many properties they actually think are online in the market.
We will be taking a very different approach to Domain and Realestate.
We will not charge agents a fee ever, we will make it easy for agents to get their properties online by submitting an XML feed, we will crawl the top 50-100 or so Agents/Franchise sites and hopefully extract 70-80% of the online inventory.
I just purchased a house, its a frustrating experience with the current sites, its my aim to make this easier.
I will add a disclosure to each post from now on, so there isnt any confusion
Thanks
Mike
Elizabeth
Good Afternoon all, good to see a thriving post Peter, and good to see some of favourites return to the fold (Sam) no matter how much I disagree with them.
I still sit back and giggle when I see people say the internet should be free, and just wonder how they think this is possible.
An old boiler like myself has been around a while and I know all too well that nothing is for free. Take google, they have a business model where you pay for results – or when have got no results you pay for what you have used.
I cannot see why they would not apply the same model to any venture into real estate – especially as it is a global commodity – what revenue streams that would be.
Do not misinterpret what I am saying, I think that this is perhaps a most exciting development… but I want to see the finished product and full implications before I jump in.
But what concerns me the most in recent posts is the flippant comments, and acceptance, of companies ‘Trawling’ or ‘Scraping’ listings off everyone
Robert Simeon
I still maintain my position that Google will be a major player in the Australian property portal market. Afterall, this is exactly what their business is all about
Their Australian search engine has been lifting property information from REA and Domain for years now, which then politely redirects the search back to the respective portal. What happens is quite simple as the property punters get used to typing in their URL, which then provides them with dominant market share for their latter obvious move to become a dominant property portal.
Lifting properties these days has become standard practice for many of the free property portals take homehound.com.au for example – whom lift as much as ninety per cent of their online listings themselves. It will be interesting to see what News Ltd do with this portal as they will soon own it when their purchase of FPC goes through. The ACCC announced earlier this week that they would not block the sale.
As for measuring the traffic of the property portals that we subscribe to REA and Domain their respective bulk traffic is of very little interest to me. What I look at is the individual traffic that each property generates for ‘our’ properties not other agents. Each month I assess their individual performances for ‘our’ traffic. However, at the end of the day they are both aware that our own website well and truely out performs them which in my opinion is how it should be.
The top performing agencies get their own back yard right first – we rely on the property portals as secondary back – up !!
What we are now seeing is new players putting the established and dominant portals under the microscope. Which I believe to be a good thing just that neither are used to competition as the property portal ‘twins’ have never felt as much pressure to increase performance ever before since their respective launches.
Competition is a wonderful thing – 2007 will be a very interesting year and paying subscribers will be the ones who benefit from this new competition.
2007 – will be a year of many website renovations and hopefully those annoying advertising up – sells will become a thing of the past – just like some portals could very well become.
Tom S
To
snoop
I think competition is all good stuff.
Many agents are going to upgrade their sites as most are running on 10 year old technology ,so cost there for sure.
Google wont be a competitor to the Listings portals ,it will feed traffic to them and make money along the way from text ads.
I know this forum is about the web ,but it seems to me Theres still hundreds of millions hosed in Print,and no agent I speak to can really qualify if it works or not.
I mean I glance at Domain print every sat more for the Title deeds and Flat chat.
I never look at the listings in it.
My suburban paper is 50-60% real estate ads and I NEVER read those although I own many properties and am in the market all the time.
I exclusively use the Big two portals.
I Never use the plethora of agents sites or all these new sites with 7 listings each on them.
Robert Simeon
Tom S,
Allow me to elaborate further and I will keep it simple to thus allow you to follow my train of thought.
Sam and I, do not have a ‘thing’ going on as I (unlike yourself) are one of the very few that is actually totally transparent that provides an actual link which identifies exactly who I am.
Earlier you did provide a link that took readers to REA, however you did later suggest that this was your mistake.
From reading your abovementioned post all I can assume is that you do not have any idea how a successful real estate business is run. For the record our business is the #1 office in our network.
I believe that all property portals are now “under the pump” and let me further enlighten you that REA would love to trade places with Domain for the results that they deliver us.
Obviously, each suburb in Australia delivers different results however, in our case (not by my choice) Domain deliver our business a 3:1 majority for online enquiries.
With regard to FPC, who are in the process of selling their newspaper arm (News Ltd have already purchased their magazine businesses). Their is speculation that News Ltd could sell down their majority holding in REA and turn their focus to http://www.homehound.com.au which is the website owned by FPC, and if the sale proceeds they (News Ltd) will also own this dysfunctional property portal.
Furthermore, as one of the very few who post here and also pay to subscribe to the major portals, pass on each online enquiry, monitor traffic and actually run a real estate agency. I am of the opinion that we are are in a much more authoritive position to present the facts as we experience them – not to be constued as an opinion.
Healthy debate is fine – just that those who actually work at the coal face (and subcribe) to both REA and Domain can actually identify and pass on an exact positioning.
Sam
Quote –
To
Elizabeth
Peter,
This post could turn into gold for you.
I suggest you keep this post for prosperity, ad a few superlatives, write in a bit of action with fisticuffs flying between Sam, Robert and Tom, and you just may have before you the Australian version of Jerry Springer.
If you write in David Young and Simon Baker as the bouncers, I think you just may have a hit.
Of course the question burning on both our lips is who is going to play us? At this time I would like to nominate Dame Judy Dench to play me.
Any thoughts on you? Mel Gibson perhaps?
E
Peter Ricci
Dame Judy Dench? Well she has a great sense of humour but it says allot about you that you think one of the worlds most prominent actors would play yourself – and presumably jump at the chance!
I would have thought it would have been a local production backed by some leading overseas talent.
Now…let us assume the major portals (Hollywood Producers backed this film)
You Elizabeth would be played by Angelina Jolie, Robert would be played by Peter O’Toole ( your older husband), Sam by Russell Crowe (your rogue lover), Tom by Brad Pitt and we need someone for Dave from REA – someone who plays nice on the outside but troubled in real life , maybe someone who no-one trusts (sorry Dave but some feel this way), I know…… Jack Nicholson!
Now the plot would be thin – real thin and no one would have a clue what was going on – it would be panned but the actors (DVD extras) would show that they were having a ball through the blooper real, Sam continuously berating Dave and Robert and Elizabeth finally realising that the anger they show is really love and it rekindles their union only to find out at the final twist is that Robert can never be your husband/lover because he is in fact your brother!
PS: I would be played by Kenny! (the only local talent)
Elizabeth
Ah Peter – you do have a hit on your hands!
And maybe you could turn this into the Real Estate Agent Survivor series?
You have me pegged, I was rather careful in my selection of Judy Dench.
However I feared being type cast with perhaps Betty White (who is far too old) if it was a Stephen Spielberg production, or if it was an Independent film, the somewhat ‘easy’ Hilton lass.
Whilst I was somewhat of a corker in my youth, I am afraid that young Hilton lass just ‘takes the cake’.
I am not familiar with Kenny.
However substitutes for you just may be Jeremy Irons, Erik Banna or even the man himself, Jack Thompson!
E
snoop
Roberts Homehound comment is interesting
I thought Homehound had other “Industry” shareholders which was probably the reason it never worked as these guys never agree on anything.
So News would have to deal with them or buy them out.
Still its an interesting concept.
Robert Simeon
Hi snoop,
The site history says “In November 2004, propertypage.com joined forces with FPC Courier, one of Australia’s fastest growing media companies. As a result, property.page.com was rebranded as homehound.com.au and the listings became available to property seekers in print for the first time. Four of FPC Courier’s Sydney community titles host the homehound.com.au listings guide every week. The four titles are the Wentworth Courier, Southern Courier, The Inner Western Courier and Sydney Weekly Courier.”
It also says – “The service is brought to you by Property Page Pty Ltd (PPL), a company owned and controlled by the real estate industry’s major franchise groups including L.J Hooker, Century 21, Ray White, Raine and Horne and The National Real Estate Franchise Association of Australia.”
Basically it was set up to provide FPC with their own portal as Fairfax had just launched their junior domains ie Domain East, Domain North and Domain Inner West in direct competition to the FPC brands. Fairfax had a property portal and FPC did not so it then acquired one.
Now that News Ltd are well down the track of purchasing the FPC newspapers the interesting question is what do News do with homehound ? Given that News has plenty of newspaper clout with Cumberland Newspaper Group and now (soon) the FPC newspapers which is an expensive acquisition (we are led to believe). It would make some sense to re-brand homehound and then they have a 100 % control of their own property portal.
Having said that News are just as likely to ‘bone’ homehound and stick with their investment in REA. However, I would think that they would give serious consideration to owning their own out right as their biggest competitor Fairfax do. You know that thing “boys and their toys”.
It will be very interesting to watch how this plays out. Although their is un-confirmed speculation that they will re-brand it and package it up with their suburban newspapers.
Scott
I work for Hubonline.
Mike, I was looking at your site (feedmehomes.com.au), and I notice it states there will be ‘no charge forever’.
As someone who works in the internet advertising field, I am interested to know how you will be able to build a business with no income from your major advertisers?
I would also be interested in a response from yourself, in relation to Elizabeth’s suggestion that ‘
Peter
I would like to add a comment here. If trawling and scraping content is not good business practice then you may as well say that for every search engine including Google, Yahoo and MSN, which does the same thing.
I think some people should get over the fact that this occurs anyway and get on with developing environments where the information is formatted in such a way that it is 100 accurate.
I also think that Mike from feedhomes will be charging fees for companies to advertise alongside listings. Much the same as Google charges ads alongside search result.
Mike
Hi Guys
Interestingly you would be suprised how much data is not formatted well on the agents sites, out of a sample of 15000 properties this morning, 4000 didnt have addresses. Many dont have inspection times. Not to worry, but these wont be at the top of the list as you cant map them correctly without an address.
Re: Scraping. My view is that all the sites in the world have been scraped by every startup in the search field forever. Nothing new.
I accept Elizabeth and all other agents right to assert copyright. I just cant understand why she would want to in this case.
I am not trying to steal her listing, I am trying to drive buyers to her property.
Its hard because we are not in a position to show the site yet, but her details will be sitting on the property listing right alongside all the other stuff like photos inspection time property listing. Users can call her or follow a link.
If an agent doesnt want free listings on the site we will honor this, however it would suprise me (unless they were a shareholder in REA)
Everyone I speak to wants to break the stranglehold that the top two players have, but you cant do this without changing the playing field, so this is the best way I can think of to do this.
Legally I dont believe we are in any different position to that of a search engine who has also indexed all the content on the agents sites, we just have a much more focussed and suitable way of displaying it.
Peter is correct. We will not charge agents. We have a very low cost operation, we will have very few staff employed, much of the development is being outsourced and much of the crawling is being done from the US where the bandwidth costs are significantly lower.
This is not my first business, so suffice to say I can read a balance sheet and a profit and loss and understand how to make money.
We will sell advertising on the site to banks, mortgage brokers, insurance etc. We will be taking a very different approach to this to the others, it wont be highly in your face selling cost per 1000 impressions.
It will be very accountable, cost per action or in some cases we are investigating profit share for leads.
Advertising will be more like Google and less like ninemsn
But to be frank, my view is there is a lot of value in breaking the current model.
Hope this helps clarify.
Peter – Earlier in the week, I got given a work out by one of the commenters about taking liberties by using your blog to promote feedmehomes, I dont want to really get into an argument about it, do you and the readers want updates about the site, I am happy answer questions but I dont want to run fowl of the site ethos.
Thanks
Mike
feedmehomes.com.au
Peter Ricci
Mike
Thanks for your comments. This site is about the industry and for agents of the industry. If you have information you think is important then go for it. However just stray away from words like ‘best of breed’, ‘unique’ and ‘amazing’ and you should be fine.
You are one of a few to be doing this and you will always be questioned and if I were an agent I would ask the same questions (i would hover have a different approach to you and allow you to display my listings – but only if you could accurately do this)
The one question I would ask as an agent would be – what if in 2 years you have 4000 agents on the site and 200,000 listings turning over 1 million dollars a month and News Ltd or any other major player offered you 10’s of millions to sell!
and please don’t tell me you would not accept………..Do you see where I am going with this?
This would just mean a another one gobbled up and agents back where they began!
Mike
Hi Peter
Thanks, I will keep the amazings out and just put our perspective and answer your questions frankly.
Data on the site is only as good as the data on the original. We are very accurately scraping sites, but there is a lot of average data, ie incomplete listings, mainly addresses and inspection times are the issue, the rest of it is pretty good. When you go back and inspect the original, we got all the data that was there, its just there wasnt enough there.
I hope to be able to show a very early alpha model to a select few in the next week, I will drop you a line.
Re: Sale, Absolutely see your point of view, of course I will accept a fantastic offer to sell out, I am an entrepreneur this is what we do. This is my 2nd business I sold the 1st one 8 months ago (I have a few other startup sites and a joint venture but this is the real project).
Part of the process of starting a business is working out if someone will want to buy it at some stage, if they dont then its probably not worth starting.
Having said that, I dont believe that the potential purchaser would be one of the traditional media guys.
It could be any number of others ie mortgage brokers, banks, an overseas entrant (someone like trulia wanting to enter) or someone who runs online businesses and collects them or someone who missed out on making a killing on REA and wants to get in on the next one.
If anyone who buys doesnt do a good job or alienates the agents then someone else will eat their breakfast, not much we can do about that.
To be frank, I am very good at the creative process of launching businesses or ideas and getting from an idea to a working business. I am not a good line manager, dont like HR and get bored quite quickly, so I will almost certainly get an entrepreneur with those management skills on board reasonably quickly and possibly some name investment dollars as well.
So not much I can do about the business life cycle except do my best to raise the bar in the market and make it a better experience for the agents and the users, if I get purchased and if someone does a better job later thats life.
The question the agents have to ask is what do they have to lose by letting or aiding us to crawl their sites.
It seems to be a big win for them. Chance to get free traffic/referrals and the chance that they may not need to pay listing fees in the future to the big two.
Thanks
Mike
PS Re: 200,000 listings will probably be 12 weeks away, we only started crawling sites about 10 days ago and testing this and we have 15000 properties already and we havent let this loose on the general agents sites. Once we have finished testing the quality of the scraping we will scale this up.
Robert Simeon
Mike – you make some interesting points regarding your online business venture. As a business owner of a real estate business please I would like to address a few issues that you make.
1. My experience thus far from the ‘free’ property portals that if they charged agents would be in simple terms dismal failures. You talk of accuracy well that is my biggest beef – given that you crawl agent sites. You upload properties yet you have no idea when that property is sold. So if somebody is surfing your property portal and send an online enquiry and the agent advises that it has been sold. You just lost credibility as your data is out of date.
2. We are the #1 office at Richardson & Wrench and we run between 50 and 100 properties at any given time. Therefore, it would simply be impossible for you to be accurate on available property given that the agency has no involvement in your portal.
3. All that would happen is that the agency would issue you a legal letter advising you to stop crawling our listings. As prospective purchasers believe that the agency uploaded the properties and if it is sold they should have removed and their (purchasers) time would not have been wasted.
4. If you are crawling auction properties and I note you talk of 200,000 listings. How can you simply monitor this without causing friction between agent and purchasers. With respect you can’t.
5. For mine, the obvious success secrets of REA and Domain has been that the dominant agents keep them alive as they keep refreshing their portals with new listings. We had five exchanges today, and all were removed within 30 minutes of exchange. They are current and up to date.
6. Fairfax are the only real estate business that has 100 per cent ownership of both their print and property portal. News Limited – are actively acquiring more newspapers ie FPC. They are also the majority shareholder of REA. Otherwise known as one stop shopping, whereby both come under their respective umbrellas.
7. I believe that in years to come both companies will streamline these services. Whereby print advertising will be amalgamated with online. Out come the steak knives if you buy this deal print/online deal.
8. Real estate agencies will follow the passage of Milk Bars (which no longer exist) as the 7eleven’s, Woolworths and Coles that continue to eat up the small property players.
9. These new agencies will dominate suburbs and don’t rule out a Macquarie Bank franchise. Their (franchise) own websites will deliver greater individual traffic than that of REA and Domain combined / individual agency as email alerts deliver huge traffic. Which is why I am of the opinion that both print and online will be a package deal.
Those are my thoughts and I am looking at my 2009/2010 property crystal ball. I wish you well with your new business just, that I wanted to deliver a different landscape for your consideration.
If you are looking at the business model of REA or Domain, I bet in 12 months time we will see a totally different model = agent friendly, fast and concise.
Cheers
Mike
Hi Robert
Thanks, for your feedback, assuming you take the listing off your site, or mark it as sold, we also flag it as sold or no longer current. We keep a track of what properties are no longer on the site and archive them and if you mark the record as sold or update the record in any way so do we.
We are yet to test how quickly this can be done on a mass scale but its simply a function of computing and bandwidth.
We are crawling for now, as this is the only way to get the inventory, however we believe that an XML/RSS model will appear (this is to the agents advantage for a variety of reasons) and agents will be able to feed portals data in real time.
Crawling is much slower than using one of these feeds as I need to check all your records and mark anything not there as current and archive it.
To be frank we are still experiementing with how quick we can do this, the biggest bottleneck is the images, but once and agents properties are downloaded keeping it current is pretty easy and can be done every few hours and it is simply a matter of computing power.
I didnt understand your point re: auctions and friction between the agent and buyer?
Thanks
Mike
Sam
I don’t think keeping the data accurate would be a problem as long as the agents keep their own web sites up to to date. Weekly crawls would be sufficient to catch the changes.
snoop
The single most annoying thing about Agents windows is seeing one with 70% of the photos with sold stickers on them.
Why do they do this?
I dont think the consumer buys the story its becuase they are so good at what they do.
Peter Ricci
It is the same as on the website, it is a way of telling potential vendors that they are selling listings in a particular area and sometimes to fill their windows. The only problem is overuse in some cases. It is only really relevant if it is a recent sale.
Elizabeth
So Mike, I read your post with interest, and just begin to question if you know what makes agents tick.
I get the same questions from new staff when they start with me “Why don’t you put the address on the listing?”, “Why is there no Price?”, “If the property is sold, why is it still in the window?
Elizabeth
One further clarification for Mike, and other readers, I have gone on the record in previous posts, and stated that I have a small amount of money invested with realestate.
It is certainly not a fortune, but it keeps me interested.
A sly assertion that this may be a level of influence upon me (seeing I subscribe to domain as well), only further demonstrates your lack of appreciation of the arguments presented on how the industry works.
E
Mike
Hi Elizabeth
Let me appoligise if the comment about REA was percieved to be directly about you, it was not, it was simply an observation that most readers would question the motives of someone who didnt want the current duopoly to have healthy competition. Nothing more. Im sorry if you took it as a slur on you this was not my intention and I was unaware that you held REA. (you must admit though, it is sort of amusing that you do 🙂
It is an interesting discussion though, it appears that a select few dont want any competition to Domain or REA. Given the level of comments about the big two I do find it suprising.
If you want competition, then realise is isnt going to come from someone offering exactly the same thing as the big two. I would suggest no one will successfully launch an paid listing model in this country again.
Am I correct in assuming that the disenters want competition to the big two as long as their data is correct? If you provide an RSS feed of your properties it will be updated within the hour.
Re: Weekly scrape comment, this was Sam’s, its not our view. I see daily as the minimum, every 6 hours as ideal. If agents want to supply RSS/XML feeds as happens in the USA with Trulia then we will update it hourly.
We can only scrape what you have on the site. If you choose to put more data on Domain than on your own site there is very little I can do about this.
I cant change your opinion, you have an entrenched position and you have always done it this way. If it works for you, fantastic.
Industries evolve and change, some adapt and survive others dont, it would seem reasonable to keep an open mind and encourage new entrants rather than taking a negative, aggressive and litigious approach.
As a recent buyer and seller of a property, I dislike not having addresses and prices listed, I hate having to go to 2-3 websites to make sure I got all the properties in the suburb.
I hate having to get a street directory and then list the properties from 2-3 sources by inspection time on to a piece of paper and then do the rounds. All of this wastes my Sat morning. I suspect I am not alone.
In this age of immediate online gratification I believe most people who use this medium dont want to have to pick up the phone to find out where a property is or how much it is.
I didnt say YOU have bad data I dont know whats on your site, I dont even know your office. My view on data is that if I as a buyer cant find the property, work out if I can afford it, know how I can buy it and go look at it then its not enough data.
If your data is on the property listing we can accurately get it, if its in your listings book then we cant. When you remove it or list it as sold, we will remove it from current listings.
If I cant map it, then yes it will go to the bottom of the list because its not very useful to a user to map them all in the centre of the suburb.
The data requirements are those of the end user to make a decision to go inspect a property.
Thanks
Mike
PS Robert congrats on your 5 closes today and thanks for your best wishes. If you have any more questions I would be happy to answer them, if you like I would also be happy to show you a beta.
Jack
Unfortunately not enough agents take their own sites seriously at present.
What about taking data directly from the portals instead. ?
I think your model will work unless REA decide to take you out, good for you, bad for the agents….once again.
Mike
Hi Jack
I think anyone who poses a serious threat to the portals by scraping their sites will get tied up by legal action or technical disruption ie blocking the crawlers by IP or layer 4 means there are ways to get around this but its complicated and its a moving target.
This is why we are going to the agents directly.
Robert Simeon
Thanks Mike, I have addressed your points and I hope that my individual responces to the points that you will raise will further clarify.
Mike Says:
January 26th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Hi Robert
Thanks, for your feedback, assuming you take the listing off your site, or mark it as sold, we also flag it as sold or no longer current. We keep a track of what properties are no longer on the site and archive them and if you mark the record as sold or update the record in any way so do we.
R – we would not be loading properties to your portal. You say “assuming you take the listing off your site”. My initial post is that once the property exchanges we remove it from REA, Domain and RWM.
M – We are crawling for now, as this is the only way to get the inventory, however we believe that an XML/RSS model will appear (this is to the agents advantage for a variety of reasons) and agents will be able to feed portals data in real time.
R – Mike, agents expend significant time already uploading properties to the pay portals (they pay to subscribe and do all the manual work to appear). I agree that in time that XML/RSS will be the norm in time. However, at present agents don’t have access to these facilities and I think they are a few years away at this point in time.
M – To be frank we are still experiementing with how quick we can do this, the biggest bottleneck is the images, but once and agents properties are downloaded keeping it current is pretty easy and can be done every few hours and it is simply a matter of computing power.
R – My initial concerns are that I don’t want a secondary portal that lifts our properties and we have no control as the simple business plan is that you are milking our resources for free. With the intention of selling advertising space for you personal gain.
M – I didnt understand your point re: auctions and friction between the agent and buyer?
R – Mike this is very simple as purchasers always complain that they make buyer enquiries only to be advised that it has been already sold – yet the websites show it as being available.
Sydney averages around 200 – 300 – 400 – 500 public auctions on a Saturday (depending on the season and market). How quickly could you update ? Not to forget weekly public auctions.
Alas, and finally the greatest mistake of free property portals. A constant breach of copyright !! You have uploaded thousands of photographs, floor plans and property descriptions all of which have been paid for – and you use free of charge without the written consent of those who own those interlectual properties.
Still to be contested – however I suggest that your business would not want to be a test case.
My advice is that unless you are asked don’t participate. Unless, you have developed a property portal that redefines the currently boring property portal search criterias.
The one thing that REA and Domain have in common is the agents do all the work uploading the properties, and the purchasers do all the work filling in non – specific buying criterias. But, they do get paid for hosting our properties.
At least Domain take a purchaser/searcher/voyeur back to their last place of search.
I will further predict that the scatter gun mentality that has used and abused purchasers on paid portals in the past, will exactly be that.
As a frustrated agent on property portals I can say ” You can bank on that !! “
Mike
Hi Robert
Guess we will just have to look at the beta to see if it : breaks the mold of the existing portals.
I take your point about the copyright, my point is this. Google et al has been doing this for ever and none of you are complaining.
They have been collecting this data since you opened your site so they can make money out of showing ads next to it.
I would be interested in both Elizabeth and Roberts opinion of how this is any different?
This post started as Peter found a mock up of a google search property engine.
Its pretty easy to give the little startup a workout (I guess Serg and Larry are not responding to your posts) , but no one is going after Google in this discussion. They already have all your properties and images
Have a look at
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rls=GGIC,GGIC:1970–2,GGIC:en&q=4%20Warringah%20Lane%2C&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:HK9KxGQ1abUJ:www.rwm.com.au/new_propview.php%3Fview%3D28173+4+Warringah+Lane,&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5
None of you seems to be acting on this. I dont hear the agents of Australia raising a class action against Google or Yahoo.
And their data in your case is 2 weeks out of date. The silence about them doing this is deafening.
Yet, one day they will do exactly what I am proposing and you all seem to accept this. Why?
Someone is going to do what Im proposing, Google, Yahoo, NineMSN a new startup.
I guess we will all have to walk down this path and see where it leads us.
If it ends up in court so be it, but if an agent has allowed Google et al to do what it does for so long without complaint and the agent still thinks this is ok, how do you justify that its not ok for one small player.
You and I just want to sell stuff, you properties, me advertising, I think we will just get on with it. Could be wrong. Time will tell.
Robert said “My initial post is that once the property exchanges we remove it from REA, Domain and RWM.”
If you update RWM (nice site too) , we can check it regularly, I can set how often we crawl by site, our crawler is designed to realise when a property has disappeared from your site.
It keeps a track, if the record isnt there anymore, it marks it as non current and it doesnt appear in the for sale listings. Again all of this is a function of bandwidth and computing power nothing to do with how quickly we can do it.
I will show you what we have in a few weeks, I guess the collective market both Agents and Buyers will tell us if they like it and it will either thrive or die.
If it thrives I expect legal action from someone. Most likely a major shareholder in REA.
My view is, its still an experiment, its yet to be proven, but one that added another 11000 properties in the last 12 hours and that is just with only a few agents in the test database on a test server.
Glad this has started a passionate debate, I would be disappointed if no one cared.
Thanks
Mike
Robert Simeon
Thanks Mike,
I really enjoyed reading your responses and quite possibly you do have something special with beta – let’s hope that it is unique and breaks the mold.
I take your point with Google and their methodology of collecting data. In the majority of instances I believe they lift the pages from REA and Domain, both would never challenge as it delivers them increased traffic. Makes one ponder how much traffic is delivered via Google, as compared to typing in their individual URL’s to search properties.
We sign contracts with both portals that they can use all our material so it is actually the portals in my understanding that are in breach. However, given that Google is bigger than both portals combined I can’t see the agents contacting Slater & Gordon.
With regard to allowing outside advertsisers to promote their businesses on our website I would never allow that to happen. We also have a separate online business “Virtual Realty News” which is a weekly ezine (starts again this week) that goes each week to just over 8,000 subscribers and 43 countries. Thus far it has delivered us over $550,000,000 in sales to subscribers. Yes, I have also rejected outside advertising on this too.
I wish you well with your experiment and shall watch with interest and monitor your progress. Thanks for explaining how your crawl the websites and interesting method.
Good luck
Robert
Mike
Hi Robert
Thanks I will let you know when it is ready to look at and invite you to view it before it is live.
Also I would be happy to make changes based on yours and the other forum members feedback.
In reality Google indexes from both REA, Domain and your site and all the other agents sites.
Your site ranks extremely well for Mosman/Neutral Bay searches but in other stuff (like property addresses) they make a call in the algorithm that gives one site a better ranking over another for given search terms your site is good and your sales record is amazing, however due to a variety of reasons they would rank the two portals higher.
Anyway maybe once we get this going I can give you a live demo on the notebook at the Oaks or the Blues Point Hotel (Im only just a few suburbs away from you guys)
Thanks
Mike
PS if you want to beat Napier properties in ranking for the same addresses have a look at the folllowing for your site
1. Change Image name to propertynumber-street-suburb
2. Change URL to propertynumber-street-suburb
3. Change Title to propertynumber-street-suburb
4. Include propertynumber-street-suburb in page meta tags.
This is what Nappier is doing and its probably why they are ranking higher for the same/similar addresses.
Scott
Hi Mike,
This question is directed not just at your business, but at anyone who is getting, or considering amalgamating data from multiple sites.
Is the information gathering process you are using in confilct, in any way, with Australian Copyright laws, such as the “Copyright Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Bill” ?
I ask, as from what little I know about copyright protection, only 10% of published material can be reproduced without permission, in Australia.
The reason google and other search engines can data from sites is that they are referencing it, not reproducing it.
I am sure it has been raised here in a few formats, but I will once agian point out that a majority of the information that appears on search engines does so with the knowledge and permission of the site’s content owners.
Mike, please be aware, I am not trying to put down your new business idea. I think it has merit and look forward to seeing it live.
Nick
Mike,
I think its the sort of idea that could actually work, and in a massive way if executed correctly. Your only mistake is actually listening to what agents think.
A free, massive directory of virtually every Australian property for sale would be a tool for the user – not the agent. If you could deliver such a free tool, that was faster and easier to use, with more listings and accurate info: Every ‘user’ in the country would embrace it overnight – just as they did Google.
In which case – who cares ‘how agents tick’? I mean really?
Do you think the guys who invented Napster cared how record executives ‘tic’? Or YouTube creator’s cared how TV network executives ‘tic’?
They quietly focused on filling the gaping holes left in the needs of the end-user by those ‘media executives’ (who were obliviously ‘ticking away’ with each other for the last decade), then sat back as those loudly ticking execs were wiped-out overnight.
If agents get too caught up in their own necessity and forget that at the end of the day, they exist exclusively to assist the Buyer and Seller – they’ll go the exact same way.
And that is precisely the reason I will never, ever, ever, buy from an agent who lists POA. They’re more interested in misleading me, the user, than giving me facts I’m seeking.
Just my 2 cents.
Nick