So after the big announcement made by the REA Group that RealBusinesses was closing its doors (seen below), leaving hundreds of business brokers in the lurch, it appears that this is not the case at all, or is it?
“As a subscriber to our realbusinesses.com.au website, I want to let you know first hand of our intention to close the service on the 3rd March 2014.
During the past 12 months we have reviewed all aspects of our wider business to align ourselves to our long-term strategic goals and REA Group purpose; to help people to live their property dreams by making the entire process simple, efficient and stress free.
We carefully considered the site experience for our ‘business for sale’ consumers and customers and whether it was in line with REA Group purpose. In this context, we felt that the capital investment required to take the realbusinesses.com.au website into the future (including the development of a strong mobile proposition) could not be justified.
We are informing you of this decision 3 months in advance to allow you the time to transition to other marketing solutions for your business.”
Timed perfectly with the RealBusinesses doors closing, another site was launched called AnyBusiness (.com.au). This site is brand new and doesn’t rank for many search terms, but they are pumping a lot of cash in buying traffic (Adwords). Which I am sure they can afford because they have a lot of brokers already signed up. Is this a result of a fantastic cold calling campaign, or did they have access to the biggest database of business brokers in Australia?
After further research, I discovered AnyBusiness (.com.au) is owned/run by Bill Tamva, the National Sales Manager from RealBusinesses. Huh? Am I missing something?
While I don’t have any issues with a new site popping up, I do have an issue with the REA Group making the announcement that they are closing their doors, and then literally within days of RealBusinesses shutting down, a new site (which looks almost identical) called “Any Business” is launched, with a direct connection with the REA Group.
So was REA telling us ‘porkies’ and actually re-launched under a new name? The question is, why would they re-brand after all of those years?
Author : Peter Watson
7 Comments
Lucas
Not running under a different name. A couple of their old sales / BDMs have just started their own site. They would have had insider knowledge about the whole shutdown and would have given them heaps of time to skin the RB site and download client lists so that they could cash-in on the massive monthly recurrings that REA were throwing away.
Glenn Batten
Hmmm.. The Domain Anybusiness.com.au seems to have been registered in November, 2013. Bill Tamva according to his linked in profile worked at REA till March 2014. That shows at least a 5 month crossover.
I never seen the code of realbusiness.com.au so cant tell you if it is the same or not.
Peter Watson
Yes that makes sense. I wonder what REA think of this move by their staff? Surely they must know about it…….
Peter
The said thing is that all the brokers who were convinced to advertise with them, I’m sure do not realise they buy there traffic. Meaning they get zero organic searches.
It will only be a matter of time before they cotton on, but by the Any Business would have cleaned up!
Matt A
Are you seriously suggesting REA shut down Realbusinesses to open under a different name?
Peter S
I just noticed that there is a link to realcommercial.com.au at the top of every page of http://www.anybusiness.com.au, and it does not appear to be a sponsored link. Unless you were aware that they were owned by different entities, on first impression, one would assume that the 2 websites were associated.
Ryan
I know this is an old thread, but the actual HTML markup looks VERY similar to REA’s standards. This is a fair indication of the underlying code used is similar to REA. Just my 2 cents.