…that the wordpress.com domain does REALLY well in google searches for the various “tags” that get associated with posts.
For example, the wordpress.com tag for REALOGY shows up just below the wikipedia entry for the company and above the Inman news page on REALOGY:
And because Rob and I are the only people on the platform talking about Realogy, we get an outsized influence in how Realogy is represented on the web.
Boy, I’m sure Realogy won’t be alone as this wide-reaching ripple effect makes its presence felt in more and more segments of our industry.
Check out the April issue of Forbes; page 60 has an article entitled “Fire Sale”, discussing the fact that the banks are finally starting to take significant discounts, either in short sales before the auction or with their REO’s after the auction. I’m surprised this hadn’t happened earlier but it certainly appears that we’ve reached the tipping point. Great for us investors, bad for house values and bad for the banks.
Burn your TV…. go find a deal,
Richard 
Chief Deal Weaver
http://www.BlackWidowNetwork.com
…listings to Trulia, but they just announced that they are giving all their listings to FrontDoor.
I can’t help but look at these announcements from the perspective of the Move team… And the fact that two large brokerages companies (Prudential and Realogy), representing a substantial portion of US listings, appear to have made the mental leap of faith that they are best off syndicating their listings as widely as possible, should serve as one of the clearest warning signs yet that the clock is ticking for realtor.com. My take is that Move and NAR will need to agree to do something interesting with realtor.com soon or risk loosing significant market share going forward.
Will we reach a point where competition moves to the interfaces rather than listing inventory? That’s something to strive for.
Ed,
That would definitely change the dynamics around real estate search completely. I don’t think we’ll get there in the near future… and I actually think we’re more likely to see a fragmented situation with all the big search sites getting most of the listings, but none getting a comprehensive database to be useful to consumers by itself.
However, that really might be the best of all worlds for the typical agent/broker site if they remain the only ones with IDX access.
Since realtor.com has amazing organic rankings and is in- bed with NAR because they own the domain that NAR was too slow to purchase back in the day, it will be very tough to loose significant market share. But they do to revamp the direction of the site.
@andrewhillman I’m not sure I’d agree that r.com gets amazing organic results. They do really well on a few key terms (like “real estate listings”), but add one more qualifier on there (like “seattle real estate listings” or “calabasas real estate listings”) and they are no where to be found.
If you just look at long-tail searches, (i.e. 95% of so of the real estate searches being done), my guess is that homegain, trulia, homes.com, etc are actually doing better than r.com.
And you’re right that NAR and Move are attached at the hip, but NAR actually owns the domain r.com, not Move. It’s just that Move has an irrevocable (assuming they meet some basic requirements), perpetual license to run the site for them.
I gotcha, i was not looking at long tail searches. just general keywords that are poular. Realtor is a pretty popular keyword.
No doubt… And I’ve seen the stats that come off the backend of R.com stats and despite my discounting of R.com’s organic traffic, those popular keywords add up extremely fast.
…Realogy is now syndicating all of their listings to Zillow. But this won’t come as a surprise to regular 4realz readers, since I mentioned that was likely to happen last week based on a message from a tipster…
“The only listing announcement related to the three companies in the “tip” I see coming out of NRT is that they are sending their listings to Zillow since they are already (presumably) sending listings to Trulia and Frontdoor.”
However, there’s more juice to this story!
Turns out that not only is Realogy (and that means Coldwell Banker, ERA, Sotheby’s International Realty, The Corcoran Group, and Century 21) adding all of their listings to Zillow, but they (or at least NRT, which includes all of those brands except Century 21) are apparently taking some of their ad money out of Realtor.com. Here’s how one tipster phrases it:
“Starting February 13 agents have 3 days to buy the exclusive office spots at a 10% discount. After that NRT associates can purchase other NRT offices unsold spots for 30 days. NRT funding of agent branding goes away on R.com and agents can pay $99 a year to get that back.”
The way it was described to me by a Coldwell Banker insider is that NRT is just looking to shift some money associated with one product (Featured Homes). And while it is significant that some money is being shifted out of R.com at the corporate level, it was viewed as more as an adjustment than a wholesale change in strategy.
Even if it is just an adjustment, I think it is safe to say that Realogy’s new strategy does not bode well for R.com’s negotiating strategy with the other big brokerages.
You know I’m a CB agent. I’ve see them play around with marketing strategies and I NEVER understood why they were spending so much money on R.com – I think it’s a good move for them to shift their marketing somewhere else, the question is where?
…announcement. It has less to do with listing distribution and more to do with a large reshuffling of resources.
But I’m torn… Despite the fun of “breaking” rumors, I don’t want to turn this site into the Valleywag of real estate. (Also, I really like the folks at NRT and don’t want to steal any of their thunder.) Should I be publishing tips in full or is it enough to just give hints?
Post the hints; email us the scoop!
Don’t be so stingy with the details. If you don’t post them, people will stop sending you hints. They send them to you because they know you’ll talk about them. If that stops, don’t be surprised to see the hints stop as well.
Jim and Damon,
I hear you on the need to keep it interesting… I’ll let this simmer for a bit and should nothing go out publicly in the next day or so, I’ll post the info that I have.
Always happy to spread some more rumors, someone (who I’ll leave anonymous) justed emailed me this tip:
“…the reason I am sending this is that I was just speaking with my manager here at [XYZ] who told me that ‘You will be happy to hear that NRT is going to have and announcement in the next few days about a partnership with Trulia, Zillow and Frontdoor.’”
Just for clarity, NRT, LLC runs the residential real estate companies Coldwell Banker, ERA, Sotheby’s International Realty, and The Corcoran Group. While their parent company, Realogy, adds the Century 21 brand to the mix.
In terms of NRT’s existing listing syndication, here is what I’ve been able to piece together:
I point this out because it leads me to wonder if there is something more than the standard listing syndication agreements… The only listing announcement related to the three companies in the “tip” I see coming out of NRT is that they are sending their listings to Zillow since they are already (presumably) sending listings to Trulia and Frontdoor. Am I missing something?
Trace 2:14 pm on April 29, 2008 Permalink |
I can’t say I see wordpress tag pages rank noticeably for most of the searches I do day to day… I’m inclined to think that this example might be more influenced by lack of competition for the specific keyword more then anything else….
Dustin 2:22 pm on April 29, 2008 Permalink |
Trace:
It’s only recently that I’ve started to see wordpress.com tags show up on search results… Combined with your point that they only do well on niche tags means that you’re right that they aren’t a dominant source of traffic (yet).
But in many ways, I live for the niche traffic since it is often extremely relevant, so I’m more than happy to get the jumpstart from WP.com’s.
-Rob 5:40 pm on April 29, 2008 Permalink |
Now if we can only somehow combine our powers, Dustin, to extract outsized financial rewards from Realogy….
C’mon, doesn’t anyone over at Realogy want to bribe a couple of RE.net bloggers for some spin?
I kid, I kid!
-rsh
Sherry Chris 4:36 pm on April 30, 2008 Permalink |
Hi, it’s Sherry from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate (Realogy) We can’t bribe you but we can say thanks for blogging about us!
Dustin 11:49 pm on April 30, 2008 Permalink |
Sherry:
Thanks so much for stopping by! And so very cool that BH&G has a blog!
floridamoves 6:17 am on May 2, 2008 Permalink |
C’mon Goofinheimers, stop clogging up my reader with your inane rantings. Like there is soooooo much money in the real estate industry these days that you will be paid for writing a blog about Realogy. Sorry haven’t had my coffee yet.
Having said that, WordPress is the way to go. It’s growth far exceeds Blogger and it offers a more advanced platform.
Good luck with your little extortion experiment fellas!
From the Beach Chair,
Matt Gentile – 300 Days of Sunshine
FloridaMoves.com