One of the big complaints by real estate agents when the Google Real Estate service started up was that the 2nd and 3rd tier real estate portals were actively pushing the agents properties to Google as well. Agents where uploading property portals like Homehound, Myhome and Onthehouse who were then turning around and re-uploading the same properties to Google
When several sources upload the same property to Google they apparently use the Pagerank system to work out who is the default page to display. Whilst all options are available when you press the “more info” option the majority of the traffic would be to the default link and in most cases the default link is not back to the agent, but to one of these portals. Ideally an agent wants this traffic to come back to their own website.
Many agents found the only way to guarantee their own link was seen on Google Real Estate was to stop uploading to these free portals. This was a little bit like cutting your nose off to spite your face. The free portals might not bring you the same enquiry levels as the top 2 subscription portals but as a value proposition it’s hard not to use them. It really became an either/or situation and unfortunately for the Free portals the power of Google’s reputation won out and they were shut off by an increasing number of agents.
We currently use Portplus and it’s as easy as unticking a box to shut off a feed to one of these portals.
There has been enough agents switching them off that Homehound now offers the option not to re-upload your properties to Google if you ask them and Myhome should have the option in place by next week.
If your considering canceling the free portals to improve your own results on Google Real Estate then I would suggest you give them a call first. Now you might be able to have your cake and eat it too!