Doing it the Coldwell Banker way: Yahoo is now Google’s…
…hmmm… I can’t do it justice. You just have to watch the video yourself.
Tagged: Yahoo RSS
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Dustin
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Dustin
5 Reasons Microsoft Search Still Sucks
All the talk about Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google reminded me that I hadn’t checked to see if Microsoft has made any improvement to their search results in quite a while…
I know one term doesn’t make a rule, but I’ve found the term [Seattle Real Estate Blog] to be great for testing out the search engines over the years. Over the past three years, Google has always delivered relevant results for the term, while it used to be full of spam for both Yahoo and Microsoft. It’s interesting to note that Yahoo has made great strides over the past few years, while Microsoft is still lost in the dark.
Here’s the top five results by search engine:
Google [Seattle Real Estate Blog]:
- Rain City Guide
- Seattle RE Prof
- Seattle Bubble
- Ardell’s Seattle RE blog
- Guide to Seattle RE
All of these are great blogs and worthy of being in the top five.
Yahoo [Seattle Real Estate Blog]:
- Seattle RE Prof
- Redfin Corporate Blog
- Rain City Guide
- Redfin Sweet Digs
- Ardell’s Seattle RE blog
Again, all of these are great blogs worthy of being in the top five for the search results.
MSN Live [Seattle Real Estate Blog]:
- “Seattle Real Estate Blog”
- Spam site that’s been around for years… A few years ago the webmaster got very pissy with me when I told him he had to stop republishing EVERY Rain City Guide article in full on his site. There’s nothing original on the site as it is all republished articles from Seattle blogs and news sources.
- seattle-real-estate-blog.com
- Parked domain with no content
- “Real Estate Blogs”
- Landing page with links to actual blogs. This is the best of the top five results, but still not a Seattle real estate blog.
- “Seattle Real Estate and Puget Sound Real Estate – A blog”
- Account suspended by BlueHost. This normally happens when someone is posting spam.
- “Real Estate Blog”
- Takes you to a landing page that says “This blog currently has no posts.”
There results are horrible. Two spam sites, two sites with no content, and one page with a few links. There are some great real estate blogs in Seattle, but Microsoft can’t seem to find them as their search algorithms are still so easily gamed by spammers.
Scoble thinks Microsoft should buy up Facebook and keep it closed to all but their search engine. Personally, I think they’d find a way to screw that up.
UPDATE: NYTs says Microsoft is getting ready to PAY people to use their search. How sad.
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Trace
What we’re seeing with the state of microsoft search is the result of a 5 year plus project costing billions and the product still doesn’t work, period.l…. hence the microsoft / yahoo deal that has been up and down as of late…. microsoft has yahoo pretty much pinned at this point so it is likely they will be working something out…. we will see soon….
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Ryan Ward
You think that’s bad? Check the search results for “atlanta reale state” —>
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=atlanta+real+estate&FORM=MSNH
The 50 (read fifty!) pages are subdomains of the same website. That is 500 search results from the same domain for the most trafficked term for Atlanta real estate”
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Dustin
Ryan: Wow! There’s almost something comical about that!
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Brian Requarth
Ryan, I see your website at the top of the list and a bunch of other websites all on different domains. Not really sure I understand what you mean?
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Reno Real Estate
I think Microsoft finally realized this and doggedly pursued Yahoo.
Though I still have my doubts on how they are going to pull it off and do some real competing against google.
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TimJ
…although if you add quotes around the search term,(“Seattle Real Estate Blogs”) I think you’ll see that you get different results on all three. Hmm…
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Ryan Ward
Brian,
Must be a datacenter issue. I posted about this a few months ago on my blog with a screenshot and had people check all over the country. Most people will see subdomain.atlantarealestate.net for the first 498 results!
But hey! If you see me I must be doing something right
somewhere….BTW Brian, where do you see me? I’m like 700 here in Atlanta. Thank God for Google…
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Robbie
For real estate blog searches, Live Search is certainly worse than Google currently is. However, for other topics, it’s usually much better. Oddly enough, a few months ago I ran a search on “how do CDNs work” in which MSN & Yahoo gave me relevant results on Content Delivery Networks and Google’s results were so wrong (Canadian Viagra anyone?), I laughed for 15 minutes. No search engine gets it right 100% of the time, even Google. (Frankly, Yahoo has been giving me better results than Microsoft or Google lately).
For real estate searches, I think Live Search weighs the domain name too heavily in rankings and generates poor results. For searches on technical topics (networking / software) and product / review information (bluray players / mattresses), I’ve been seeing Google’s relevancy lead over Yahoo & Microsoft shrink during the past few months.
Still, I don’t see Microsoft beating Google any time soon. However, I don’t think Microsoft needs to beat Google, they just need to be a competitive #2 and
force Google to play defense. -
Brian Requarth
Ryan, it could be that I am located in South America. I know results vary depending on IP addresses. After I posted I thought that could be it. Anyways, I believe u. I was just confused when I checked the results.
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Jillayne Schlicke
I did a search on the term “short sale” and google carried the blog post I did last March on the first page. It doesn’t show up on the first page of either yahoo or MSN, and the yahoo and msn results looked very similar.
I like how blog posts are given some love on google.
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Dustin
Robbie: I was hoping you’d come around these parts!
I’ll just have to believe you that it does better in some areas, because it definitely misses the boat on real estate related content.And Jillayne: That Short Sale article you wrote is still one of the highest traffic articles on RCG on any given month. It’s huge and so much fun that Google loves it!
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Portland Real Estate
Sad but true… Microsoft just doesn’t seem to understand that they need to make the results better (and faster) than Google’s if they want to compete. Giving people money is just a short sighted way to spend their hoards of cash. At this point, they can’t even get their own staff to use their search engine consistently from what I hear.
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Dustin
If Yahoo got their social media act together, this…
I’ve always enjoyed the niche social networks bought by Yahoo (Flickr, Upcoming, del.icio.us, etc.)… and if they can keep them niche, while making Yahoo more social, there’s potential for some interesting synergies.
(I found this particularly interesting in the context of Yahoo’s desire to keep prodding along…)
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Dustin
The Big List of Real Estate Events
As best I can tell, there isn’t a great list of real estate events that is published anywhere on the web. CourseDates probably comes the closest with their list of real estate conventions, but even they’re missing the smaller events that I want to track.
So this evening, I created a group on upcoming simply called Real Estate, and I invite all of you to join me in my endeavor to track the various real estate events that occur around the country.
I settled on upcoming for a variety of reasons:
- Many people with the RE.net are already using it to track their events (see Portland RE Meetup, Adwords Training by Reachd and RE BarCamp as examples)
- It’s free
- Nice RSS support (including the ability to sort-events by start date within feeds)
- It has great social features including a “groups” that will allow me to promote others to help manage the group.
So, here’s how I plan to use the group:
- I’ve added the list of events to the sidepanel of 4realz.net
- I subscribed to the group’s RSS feed so that I can get an update any time someone else adds a new event to the group!
- I opened up permissions on the group so that anyone can join and add events to the group.
- I’ll continue to add events as I learn about them.
How can you use the group?
- Join the group and add your own events.
- You can subscribe to the group’s RSS feed to learn about new real estate events as they get published on upcoming.
- Add the list of real estate events to your sidepanel.
- You can either add the events as a badge or
- If you’re using wordpress.com like me, then you can add them via the RSS widget (and if so, use this RSS feed: http://feed43.com/real-estate-events.xml since it is already formatted to display the events a better and took some odd/ugly parsing to get right)
Of course, if people start adding spammy-type events to the group, I’ll buckle down the hatches a bit in terms of who can post events, but at least initially, I don’t see that being much of an issue. And if you have any ideas for how to improve the tracking of real estate events, I’m definitely interested in hearing about it!
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Justin Zimmerman
I just started this same project!
Bernice Ross hooked me up with the 1st piece of the puzzle.
*NAR’s List of State Conventions* http://www.realtor.org/convhome.nsf/pages/StateSched?OpenDocument
Small world!
-Justin Zimmerman
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Jay Thompson
Very cool! I joined and added Inman Connect SF…
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toddwcarpenter
Dustin, did you change dates on your education seminars, or did I just screw them up when I put them on CoRE?
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Dustin
Awesome Justin! Great find!
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Dustin
Jay and Todd : So glad you both joined up and started adding events! (it works!)
And Todd: We did change the dates on the 4Realz Events. Sorry about any confusion!
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Steve Jagger - Reachd
Great idea in creating the upcoming.org group. We have been using upcoming for a while to promote our events and it has been every helpful. Great idea to list them all together.
Thanks again.
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Dustin
Steve, so glad you’re on board with the idea! I did notice that you guys are pretty good about posting all your events there. Feel free to join the group and add any additional events as you publish them.
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Magnus
Great idea!
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Dustin
By the way, if anyone else is wondering why my sidepanel doesn’t update after you submit an event to upcoming… it turns out it just takes time. The feed parser I’m using only updates itself every 6 hours unless I pay $29/year…
I’d probably folk over the money except I’m not sure I even like this solution… and besides, it gives me a chance to see events (my feed reader picks up the events directly from the upcoming site without much delay) before they hit 4realz.net.
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Dustin
Magnus:
I’m all for including international events, so let us know if there’s something going on in your part of the world!
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Jay Thompson
Whoops, I wasn’t aware Joel had Connect already in there.
Strangely, the system won’t let you delete an event (even if you created it). It takes an email to Yahoo. That seems remarkably inefficient.
Updating the sidebar every 6 hours sounds fine to me. A built in delay before posting to your blog isn’t a bad thing. It might keep someone from creating an event like, “Dustin Luther is a numbskull”.
Not that anyone would do that…
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Dustin
Jay,
I think Joel added the event AFTER you!
Even so, I went with his event for the group (and removed yours) figuring he should probably be in charge of the presentation of the event. And knowing you, I figured you wouldn’t mind too much.
Nonetheless, thanks for adding it! I think we spurred Joel into action!
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Joel Burslem
You’re right Dustin, you’re post did remind me that I had to do another one for Connect 08.
Jay, I think we must have added them simultaneously. I noticed right after I submitted Connect that you had done it too! I’ve put Bloggers Connect in there too.
Upcoming’s a great service – we did it for BC and Connect last year and I’ve been using it to keep track of all the events in Portland for a while. It really seems to vary though based on what city you’re looking at, but if your city is active you can find some really interesting stuff in there.
A couple more to take a look at are eventful.com and zvents.com
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Bucking the Real Estate Trend
Another great idea. Looking forward to hearing you again in ATL on 03/27.
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Dustin
Also, while I’m in Canadian event mode, I just found this list of Canadian real estate conferences/events!
If things slow down (yeah right!), I’d love to add those to the list as well!
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Dustin
Wow! After the 2nd person pointed out the fact that Greg wrote a mean-spirited post on BHB about this real estate event group, I decided to check it out late on a Friday night.
My initial reaction was shock… while my second reaction was to feel sorry for him considering the hatred he must have bottled up inside him. Ouch.
However, since he raised the issue, I might as well explain why I didn’t add both the Unchained AND the RE Connect events to the initial list. When I started adding real estate events to Upcoming, those two events stuck out as as being unique in that I was sure that other people closer to the messaging of the events would likely WANT to be in charge of how they were displayed on the site. And just as I suspected would happen, both events were quickly added by others. Joel stepped up to the plate within hours to add the RE Connect conference and someone else (turns out it was Todd, but that wouldn’t have been my first guess), stepped up to the plate to add the messaging for the BH event.
There were other events, like NAR Midyear and Realtor Quest, where I was pretty certain others would NOT step up to the plate, so I happily gave them a generic description. And I could have done that with the BH event, but, again, I was pretty sure that Greg would like to be in charge of how his event was portrayed on Upcoming. I also had the secondary concern with the BH event that if Greg didn’t like how I described his event, then he’d have to contact me to have it changed and I don’t think that is an exchange that either of us would look forward to.
We obviously live in completely different worlds, because it didn’t even occur to me that he would accuse me of a attempting to stifle his freedom because I did not market his event on a public calendar for him. Again, wow!
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Greg Swann
> considering the hatred he must have bottled up inside him
Don’t kid yourself, Dustin. I went out of my way to bring you to the attention of the Los Angeles Times and you betrayed my trust in return. You called Cathleen Collins, Teri Lussier and Mike Farmer liars because they dared to call you on your hypocrisy. You made common cause with Joseph Ferrara and Keith Brand, the two most malevolent trolls in real estate weblogging. You completely destroyed your reputation with one word. I don’t hate you, but I definitely do pity you.
> We obviously live in completely different worlds
Obviously. I can think of two important differences: I take care of my friends — telling the truth no matter what the consequences. And I actually know how to market real estate.
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Toronto real estate
What a great idea! Unfortunately, I work in Canada and I am dealing with real estate in Toronto so it would be difficult for me to visit events in the US. However, I just noticed your comments and that you also added the international events. Thank you! I hope there will be more people from Canada who will contribute and add some interesting events.
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Dustin
> Don’t kid yourself, Dustin. I went out of my way to bring you to the attention of the Los Angeles Times and you betrayed my trust in return.
And don’t kid yourself… I went out of my way over the past two years to bring media attention to you as well. The fact that you did many good deeds for me (LA Times wasn’t the only one) doesn’t mean I have to stand by silently as you spew your style of hatred at others.
>You called Cathleen Collins, Teri Lussier and Mike Farmer liars because they dared to call you on your hypocrisy.
I did no such thing. Looking back over the post, I told Teri I wasn’t going to answer her question, ignored Mike completely, and told Cathleen that I thought she was making a disingenuous argument. I see nothing about me calling anyone a liar. Now it is your chance to fess up… you just lied.
>You made common cause with Joseph Ferrara and Keith Brand, the two most malevolent trolls in real estate weblogging.
Again, I did no such thing. I acted alone (and encouraged no one else to act…) and made my decision based on your writings alone.
>You completely destroyed your reputation with one word.
If unsubscribing to your occasional attacks on people ruined my reputation with a group of your followers, I can totally live with that. However, I clearly won’t return the favor of spewing out hatred back at you or anyone else. Hatred only breeds more hate, Greg… and I don’t need that in my life or any community I choose to be a part of. You’re obviously free to spew your brand of hatred at others all day long and if you think that it is good marketing, I’m under no illusions that I could stop you, nor would I try.
>I don’t hate you, but I definitely do pity you.
I’m in no need of your pity. I’m doing just fine.
>Obviously. I can think of two important differences: I take care of my friends — telling the truth no matter what the consequences.
I’ve always taken care of my friends as well… It is the reason I took a stand against your hatred and it is the reason I won’t return that hatred to you.
>And I actually know how to market real estate.
Really? You end your comment on such a weak dig at me. You’ve mentioned many times in the past that I was a huge influence on how you decided to build and market BHB that I’m surprised that you’d take such a low pot-shot… Considering the number of people who are generating quality leads (i.e. leads that convert) each day thanks to platform that I’ve created on RCG, I’m somewhat surprised you’d want to take the conversation here considering you have nothing similar to demonstrate.
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Greg Swann
One of the benefits you had from my friendship is that I didn’t lean as hard as I might have on the truly stupid things you say.
Linking to 4Realz will be good for the linking blog? That’s a self-serving lie.
If RCG gets visitors who come to the site 201 or more times in a year, they must be sellers? I can’t tell if this is deception or just moronic wishful thinking. For the benefit of inlookers: The people who come to real estate weblogs most often are Realtors. Amazingly enough, ordinary people aren’t obsessed with real estate.
Real estate webloggers shouldn’t write about their listings because some of them might do it badly? Yes, of course, and they shouldn’t write at all, since so many Realtors are very poor spellers.
Whether these pronouncements are venal or just idiotic, it was an injustice to the ninety-and-nine for me to have let them stand unchallenged. An injustice to you, too, since suffering foolishness is no kindness to the fool.
In any case: No more.
My loyalty is to the people who trust me to say what’s what, without fear, without favoritism, without the incessant kissing up that typifies the vendor side of real estate weblogging.
I do want to thank you, though. You issued a challenge.
I’m going to leave my opinions out of the discussion in order to leave more space for these people to see the error of their ways, apologize profusely, and re-enter our community in a constructive manner.
And I was able to use it in a practical demonstration of how to stand up to intellectual thuggery. Saying “I won’t back down” is easy. It’s rare to have the opportunity to show people, in the most public and deeply philosophical of ways, how one can sustain human integrity against the howling of any mob. I’m no different than I was before, but a lot of people are stronger for having watched me stand up to you — and stand you down. That’s the kind of gift I want to share with people. The human race has spent entirely too much time on its knees.
But now you’re stuck, you and Joel Burslem and a host of others, having to pretend that you are not reading the most important and most informative weblog in the RE.net. This would be self-destructive if it were true, but the hypocrisy is so much worse, so much more corrosive. This much I don’t like — which is not to say that I don’t see the comedy in it. Self-destruction is the exact opposite of appropriate human behavior. You’ve painted yourself into a corner, and even trying to slink your way out of it is self-destructive. If we are not telling the whole and perfect truth, we are lying — dismantling the ego. I do hope for your sake that you can find your way out of this mess.
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Dustin
Greg,
I think the hardest part of having a dialog with you is that you’re not necessarily interested in finding any truth or coming to an understanding, but rather, you consistently go for the kill, whether it is intellectually honest or not… Rather than try to defend your obviously bone-headed statements (or admit you were wrong) when I point out where you are mistaken, you are like a blind man throwing grenades hoping that something falls near me.
Nonetheless, I’ll keep playing defense here since I have no real desire to go on the offense against you.
> Linking to 4Realz will be good for the linking blog? That’s a self-serving lie.
Never said that… I said it would benefit them if I provided them a link… and if someone is on my radar, then they are more likely to get links from me. If you’re a new blogger is interested in getting valuable links (and many of them are) then linking out to some of the more prominent bloggers is the best way to get links back to your site. I stand by everything I said earlier even if you’re tried to mis-interpret it in your paraphrasing.
> If RCG gets visitors who come to the site 201 or more times in a year, they must be sellers? I can’t tell if this is deception or just moronic wishful thinking. For the benefit of inlookers: The people who come to real estate weblogs most often are Realtors. Amazingly enough, ordinary people aren’t obsessed with real estate.
Again, I never said that, but I’ll take credit for not explaining it clearly enough so that you could understand. We get a lot of emails through RCG from from buyers and sellers who are asking for help. I’ve noticed (anecdotally) that a majority of the people who don’t know much about the site (but contact us anyway) tend to be out-of-town buyers, while people who tend to know all about previous RCG conversations tend to be local sellers. Again, I stand by everything I said earlier even if you’re tried to mis-interpret it in your paraphrasing.
> Real estate webloggers shouldn’t write about their listings because some of them might do it badly? Yes, of course, and they shouldn’t write at all, since so many Realtors are very poor spellers.
Nothing to do with writing about them badly or not… And as a matter of fact, I still think most listings are not interesting enough to be included in a blog post. Consumers do come to the internet to look for listings and that it why agents should make sure that there listing stands out in the various comprehensive databases that are available (most of them through their MLS, but there are others). It has nothing to do with agents being good writers or bad writers, it has everything to do with using a blog to create a sense of community and listings are a conversation killer that reinforces to consumers some of the worst stereotypes about agents (i.e. “featured homes” on a blog indicate to consumers that an agents is only in it to sell them a listing, and not to provide them with the best possible home). Again, I stand by everything I said earlier even if you’re tried to mis-interpret it in your paraphrasing.
> Whether these pronouncements are venal or just idiotic, it was an injustice to the ninety-and-nine for me to have let them stand unchallenged. An injustice to you, too, since suffering foolishness is no kindness to the fool.
I’m not sure why you think that you let these things go unchallenged since you commented or blogged about each of these issues! You may not have been mean in your comments or argued your case effectively, but you clearly did NOT ignore them.
> My loyalty is to the people who trust me to say what’s what, without fear, without favoritism, without the incessant kissing up that typifies the vendor side of real estate weblogging.
Not sure what you’re referring to here, but these vague pronouncements are powerful in their emptiness.
> And I was able to use it in a practical demonstration of how to stand up to intellectual thuggery. Saying “I won’t back down” is easy. It’s rare to have the opportunity to show people, in the most public and deeply philosophical of ways, how one can sustain human integrity against the howling of any mob. I’m no different than I was before, but a lot of people are stronger for having watched me stand up to you — and stand you down. That’s the kind of gift I want to share with people. The human race has spent entirely too much time on its knees.
You’re ego go the better of you on this one. I was not (and still am not) so disillusioned to think that you would ever recognize the errors of your ways… My comment was not directed at you, but rather to some of your followers who were leaving comments on the post that were clearly using disingenuous arguments. At the time, I wasn’t clear to me that those people had completely fallen for your (mistaken) logic that good marketing involves going for the kill as oppose to being intellectually honest.
>But now you’re stuck, you and Joel Burslem and a host of others, having to pretend that you are not reading the most important and most informative weblog in the RE.net. This would be self-destructive if it were true, but the hypocrisy is so much worse, so much more corrosive. This much I don’t like — which is not to say that I don’t see the comedy in it. Self-destruction is the exact opposite of appropriate human behavior. You’ve painted yourself into a corner, and even trying to slink your way out of it is self-destructive. If we are not telling the whole and perfect truth, we are lying — dismantling the ego. I do hope for your sake that you can find your way out of this mess.
No problem there… If you’re ready to dismantle your ego, then you should start by addressing each of the points you’ve conveniently ignored when I raised them in this thread. I’ll help you with a summary list:
* Do you still think it would have been wise for me to add the unchained event to upcoming or was that something that would have been much better left to someone closer to the messaging of the event like yourself?
* Do you still think I was stifling your freedom by not adding the unchained event to upcoming? If not, then your post and follow up comments were clearly a mistake based on your not having a clear understanding of the consequences of my taking on the marketing of your event.
* Do you still think that I should stand by and let you spew hatred at others because you did me a favor?
* Were you lying when you said I called Cathleen Collins, Teri Lussier and Mike Farmer liars?
* Can you show any basis for saying I “made common cause with Joseph Ferrara and Keith Brand”? Just because I agreed with them on one issue (i.e. your hatred got the better of your in your post), that doesn’t imply I made joined some cause with them. Again, explain yourself, or admit you were wrong in making this attack on my motives.
* How did removing myself from a community that accepts the spewing of hatred is going to ruin my reputation, because it obviously hasn’t happened yet?
* Please explain how you are more of a marketing expert than me considering I can demonstrate experience creating a real estate platform that has generated hundreds (more likely thousands) of quality leads for real estate professionals, and you have nothing similar to turn show.
If you’re not willing to address these issues, I would not be a bit surprised. However, it would be quite indicative of the fact that you are in no way searching for truth, but rather trying to go for the kill by making disingenuous and mean-spirited attacks.
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Greg Swann
I don’t have time for this, nor do I have any respect for you. I do hope you will find an honest way to undo the damage you have done to yourself by striking a childish pose. It would seem from the length of this response, which I haven’t taken the time to read, that you are moving in the opposite direction. Your problem.
If I decide to take this up again, I will do it exhaustively, from BloodhoundBlog, and the last of your ugly secrets will be exposed.
You can have the last word. I’m done with you.
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Dustin
Greg,
As I suggested in my previous comment, I can’t say I’m a bit surprised you don’t want to continue this conversation since you have clearly not been able to demonstrate that you can sustain an argument with intellectual honesty.
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Jay Thompson
Wow, I got chastised by Greg for saying “Been away for awhile. I see nothing has changed.” in a comment on his blog. (and that was the entirety of my comment on BHB)
His response to that comment was that I was “rude beyond all accounting”, “churlish” and pulling a “public posturing stunt”.
He then had the gall to tell me I needed to apologize to him.
But in yet another display of the ultimate in hypocrisy he comes here to “your place” and spews this sort of venom???
Unbelievable.
And no it’s not surprising, at all, that he refuses to answer the questions.
I used to have a lot of respect for Greg and what he’d done with Bloodhound. He says nothing has changed, but he is mistaken. His personal attacks have increased in quantity and volume, the incessant gloating about the traffic to BHB, and promotion of his (excuse me, Brian Brady’s) event have turned BHB into a mere shell of what it was. It’s quite sad actually.
I took BHB off my feed reader a couple of weeks ago. I went back a couple of days ago to look at a comment thread I had subscribed to and was foolish enough to read more. Got sucked into making the above comment and I regret it.
I’ve since unsubscribed to all the comments on BHB and will not return. I’m sure Greg could care less, what’s one less reader (and advocate) to him? But judging by the volume of calls and emails I received expressing support when I left BHB, I’d have to say I’m not the only one no longer reading. Whether Greg believes that or not, I don’t really care.
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Joseph Ferrara.sellsius
For the record, Mr. Swann, my “cause” on the occasion of your most recent hate-filled harangue, as expressed in my Wrath of Swann post, was different than Dustin’s.
While Dustin and others (rightly) objected to your mean spirited personal attack on another blogger, I did not. While I disagreed with your hateful and demeaning attack (it was not satire, my dear fellow– you lack for humor as a desert lacks for rain), I defended your right to do it. I objected to your hypocrisy vis-a-vis your niceness comment policy, which, everyone now knows is a total farce and nothing more than a clever mechanism for controlling the conversation so that you look like the BMOC. That is why you rarely venture out of your lair to debate– you can’t control the conversation on other venues as you do at BHB. Besides, when it appears you are losing points in a debate (as here) you take your ball and run home.
What I find particularly hypocritical is your knocking the efforts of other real estate agent bloggers (like Daniel R) for trying new things when the truth is you are a novice realtor with meager sales success– using both online or offline methods, you simply can’t sell (hey, it’s a tough profession & we all see you want to do something else– nothing wrong with that). But how then do you dare ridicule others when you have such a beam sticking out of your eye?
Dustin
Rumors spread that Trulia is getting Prudential’s Listings
It started with the real estate coach and spread to Joel before hitting 4realz. And it all seems so believably that no one is really doubting the story.
However, I think it is worth nothing that there’s a bit of confusion over the total number of listings that Prudential would be giving Trulia… and I’m pretty sure the the confusion stems from the fact that Yahoo ran their real estate site as it if was an IDX feed from Pru so that Pru was “sending” all the MLS listings (Pru and others) for most MLS’. However, if Prudential is sending listings directly to Trulia, this would no longer be the case and I’m almost positive Pru doesn’t have anything close to 4M US listings as reported by the various sites.
Either way and any way, this would be another big win for Trulia, but as Joel notes, Michael agrees, (and I’ve said before), it is not self-evident that at the end of the day, the consumer wins with broker-fed listing sites.
Utah Dave
I just dont see why Trulia is growing. Not a fan of how their database works. I see it to grow links.
Dustin
Trulia can definitely feel like an anomaly sometimes… But at least in my opinion, their growth is well-deserved. They’ve been savvy and executed well in both their SEO and brokerage strategy, although it will be really interesting to see if they grow going forward especially after they were recently hit by google on many of their local pages.
Dustin
The 1st 4RealzEd event was yesterday and…
I think I’ve recovered enough now to actually post about it!
Despite our best efforts to be prepared, the day started off a bit rough with a nearby mudslide taking out power in our building in the morning (meaning no hot coffee and no projector) and a 9-car pileup on a nearby freeway slowed me down tremendously. AHHH
So, to say it started rough would be an understatement… But once it started, things seem to get on a roll quickly.
I started with an overview of consumers expectations in a web2.0 world to set expectations for the day… Jim followed up with presentation on optimal features and design for a real estate website. Then it turned back to me for a presentation on social networking… lunch… then another presentation by me on creating value through blogging about communities. And we returned for the day’s finally with Jim giving a engaging presentation on measuring and tracking marketing results to ensure a positive ROI.
All around, it was a wonderful day! And, maybe they were just being nice, but the attendees who talked with me said only good things about the education.
Because I promised attendees I would give them a list of all the sites I mentioned in my presentations (so that they wouldn’t have to ask me to spell out each URL), here is the list for everyone’s benefit.
Consumer Expectations in a Web2.0 World:
- Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Trulia, Rain City Guide, RealCentralVA, Amazon, Netflix, del.icio.us, Firefox, Zillow API, MySpace, LinkedIn, Altos Research, Property Shark, Market Snapshot, Homethinking, Redfin, Realtor.com, Zillow, Google PageRank
Engaging in Social Networking to Earn Clients
- MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Inman News Community, Zillow Discussions, Trulia Voices, ActiveRain, Google Reader (feed reader), AnnaLuther.com (RSS feed of listings), Mobile Reader
Using Blogs to Build Communities
- WordPress.com, Top Producer Blogs, Yahoo Mail, moving to seattle post, Real Estate Tomato, RealCentralVA, 4realz.net, Notorious Rob, Grow-a-Brain, Northern Virginia RE Guide, Altos Research blog, NELA Live, REagent in CT, St Paul Minnesota, FOREM, Blog Calabasas
I wasn’t tracking the sites that Jim mentioned, but there were not nearly as many of them in his presentations…
And thanks again to all the bloggers who have helped spread the word about the event, the sponsors who helped us keep the price low and all the attendees who made the day possible!
I received some incredible feedback from all three groups, which is going to lead me to make some changes to the upcoming events (I’ll announce those early next week!). Great stuff all around. Thanks again to everyone!
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Jay Thompson
Congrats Dustin! Mudslides and pile-ups aside, I’m sure it was well worth it for the attendees. Sounds like a great program.
But next time, you should slip some Phoenix real estate blog in there somewhere…
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Dustin
So very true!
At one point I list “reasons blogs work”, and I use different examples from RCG posts… During the presentation I came to the conclusion that I had too many RCG screenshots, so my plan is to redo that section to bring in some other great real estate blogs… and I can only imagine there will be at least one Phoenix blog included!
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toddwcarpenter
Congrats Dustin. I saw your twitter yesterday morning and had to laugh. Great that it all came together.
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Athol Kay
Wow, that’s some heady list to be included in with. I appreciate it!
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Mike Farmer
Congratulations!
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TimJ
Congratulations on surviving your first event. You’re off to a great start! (except for the little mudslide and traffic thing).
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Doug Willis
I was one of the attendees yesterday. Jim and Dustin provided a wonderful presentation and experience. If you are thinking of blogging, you must go. Seeing Dustin is like, well, “having Moses personally escort you on the arc”.
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Dustin
Thanks to everyone!
And a special thanks to Doug! I’m planning to send all the attendees an email with a link to this post, but I hadn’t made it that far yet, so it is awesome that you followed up already! I just played on your site a bit and noticed that your site looks pretty darn good and includes a great cast of contributors. You’re already ahead of the game!
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Richard Dale-Mesaros
Hi Dustin,
Glad to see you’re getting out there and enlightening the world about the new social networking. Things are moving at such a fast pace in this arena and we appreciate folks like you who are keeping us in the loop. 2008 is certainly going to be the year of the niche social network, as we’ve already been seeing with our own site for real estate investors.
Keep up the good work!
Richard
Chief Deal Weaver
http://www.BlackWidowNetwork.com -
Dustin
Athol,
I used one of your Bad MLS photos posts to talk about the benefits of using humor… and the slide alone was effective. Everyone had a good chuckle! So credit goes to you for creating a fun resource for us all!
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pasadenaviews
Dustin, this class was everything I hoped for and more. As always, you did a tremendous job making sense of Web2.0. Jim’s presentation on what a website should have and the ROI gave me a lot to think of. I have a slew of next steps to incorporate. Keep up the great work and I look forward to more classes. THANKS to you both!
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Jim Marks
Dustin,
You are superman… Good job getting this post and all the links up… It is Saturday morning and I am just getting my feet back under me… with a weekend in Vail… I thought I would check your blog to get the news!
I gotta admit that the Mudslide was the first time I have ever seen you sweat! but we worked it out!
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monikamcgillicuddy
Sounds like it all worked out in the end. I wish I could have been there to see you guys in action.
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Marlene Bridges
Dustin – What an awesome day of mind expansion. You and Jim were fully prepared. You gave us so much information in the morning that I was on the edge of my seat taking notes as quickly as I could. When it was time to break for lunch I was shocked that so much time had passed. Then after lunch you guys packed in even more.
Dustin, you demystified, clarified, and confirmed things I knew, things I thought I knew, and things I’d wondered about. In today’s market, we simply don’t have money to burn. I absolutely thought my money for the day was well-spent. You valued our time and there was no “dead air”. You and Jim did such an incredible job. BTW – I drove three hours to get to there (enjoyed the scenery on the 405 and saw things I usually sail by-the mudslide affected the freeway, too) and I’d do it again in a heartbeat to hear what you have to say.
Thanks also to the great sponsors. Events like this one simply can’t happen without sponsors. Thank you for carefully choosing relevent sponsors for this event. I can’t wait to get my Altos Research up and running on all my websites!
Looking forward to the next 90 days of learning and to future events like this one to build up my Web 2.0 muscles.
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Dustin
Irina, Monika and Marlene: Thank you so much for the kind words about the presentation! Everyone at the event was wonderful, inquisitive, attentive and understanding. A perfect audience!
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Naia
Dustin and Jim: As an attendee who showed up a few minutes late (15-30?), I can tell you that by the time I showed up, you were handling it all well, and I had no sense of crisis.
To all future attendees: The workshop was well worth it! Balanced and useful across a variety of speakers: Dustin, Jim, and the 5 minute presentations by the three sponsors.
Dustin and Jim, I was thinking that you were served well by your experience at tracking communication across communities. I think it made your planning for this event strong because the parts of the live event LINKED together well—even while each participant was able to keep their identity and provide their own expertise. That’s a hard thing to do well in live events, and you succeeded.
Naia
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Naia
Oh, yes. …btw, count me in for the 90day expansion of your training.
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Dustin
You’re on Naia! And thanks so much.
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Missy Caulk
Sounds like fun, mudslides, car pile ups and all, but no coffee, I draw the line there.
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Ubertor
Congrats Dustin. Sounds like a great event.
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Laura-LosAngelesRealEstateTalk.com
Wow! It seems like the event was a huge success. What is the 90-day expansion training? Is it only available to people who attended this first event?
Cheers to new adventures! -
Dustin
Laura,
The event was definitely a lot of fun.
In terms of the 90-day course, it is an idea that I shared with the first attendees and it involves me walking them through social networking and blogging over a 90-day time period. And, yes, I did offer it free to all attendees…
Once I get the system down, the plan is to open the course up to anyone who is interested (most probably for a fee).
Dustin
Going way back before I took my job at…
…Move, I landed a 30-minute meeting with Dan Rosensweig (COO of Yahoo at the time), where I tried to convince him that I should lead up a team for Yahoo to build a platform that would help real estate professionals market themselves at a local level using the various tools Yahoo had in-house (at the time, it was something like Yahoo 360, Flickr, upcoming, local business reviews, maps, listings, etc.).
Dan’s strongest argument against such a platform was that I should prove out the concept first by doing it myself since almost all of these platforms had APIs (and theoretically, he was right, but I was looking for a regular paycheck!).
Anyway, I only remembered this story after reading Joel’s post about Seth Godin’s new product: SquidZipper.
Even two years after my call with Dan, the market for providing a free, quality, and local marketing platform for agents is still largely undeveloped… and while one of the real estate focused verticals like Trulia or Zillow could theoretically fill this niche, it still seems like such a no brainer for one of the big guys like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo to take a page from Seth’s playbook and create a niche-specific platform for their various tools!
Seth’s platform is a great idea… but it is still missing the one thing that could really make a platform like this work: an abundance of consumers!
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Ben Martin, Va Assn of REALTORS
So true. I’ve never understood the appeal of Squidoo, and obviously I’m not the only one. For hyperlocal content, blogging still seems like the way to go.
tracytc
From where I sit, Seth has his finger on the exact pulse of consumers and how they behave. They’re going to sit down at a search engine to look for their hyper-local information, and guess what is going to come up? My hyper-local, hyper-focused SquidZipper page, especially because it will link to my hyper-local blog and my hyper-local Squidoo Lens, all of which will point back to my hyper-local SquidZipper page.
Oops! Now that I let the cat out of the bag, I’d better actually head over and set it up. =-D
Dustin
Forbes likes my idea of MicroHoo turning over…
…their combined real estate vertical to one of the big players in the space:
“And the Microsoft-Yahoo! combo needs to make sure that it owns the cream of these, including Kayak in the travel vertical and Trulia in real estate.”
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Jessie B
Great find Dustin. This makes me smile when I think of the opportunities.
In reading the linked post “The Gap In Google’s Defenses”, also from Sramana Mitra – http://www.sramanamitra.com – there is a very thing we are woking on…
“Consumers need a neutral vertical search engine as their entry point”
Good stuff.
Dustin
Design or Dysfunction?
As Brian pointed out, Yahoo Real Estate currently returns broker-uploaded listings by default, but also gives consumers the option to see “MLS Listings” via their agreement with Prudential.
My guess is that Yahoo has (internally) made the decision to end their existing IDX relationship with Prudential at some point down the road and is using the dual option as a way to smooth the transition.
However, it seems like a somewhat confusing option for consumers in the meantime… Especially, since many agents have “taken the hint” and stopped using the words “MLS” on their websites… opting instead for a consumer-friendly version of “Search for Homes!”
Dustin
I’m with Joel in wondering what…
..MicroHoo would mean for online real estate… (and especially for Move who did not renew the contracts to run the listings behind AOL Real Estate AND Yahoo Rentals last year).
My guess is that it would be a good thing for Move as it would provide at least another year of breathing space while senior execs at MicroHoo focused on trying to synergize their future online ad platforms.
On a REAL wild speculation… I think best thing this combined MicroHoo could do in the real estate space is would be to write a big paycheck to one of the big players (probably Zillow, but even Trulia or Move) and let them worry about real estate while MicroHoo sorts everything else out!
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Missy Caulk
I can’t help but wonder what that will do for Prudential. Will they still come up first because of their strategic partnership with yahoo?
That is one reason I personally don’t use yahoo that much or tell clients to search there. -
Brian Rothenberg
Hi Missy, Brian here from Yahoo!. While Prudential has been and will remain a key partner for Yahoo! Real Estate, we do allow brokers and franchisors nationwide to post listings on our site for free. Any brokerage can submit their listings to us in order to reach our millions of monthly users. You can read more in last month’s press release here: http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=286135
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Dustin
Brian,
I tried searching around the site a bit, but I’m having trouble confirming something…
Does this change mean that you guys are still showing all the MLS listings (via a Prudential IDX feed), but giving preference to the local brokers (over Prudential), when they have uploaded their listings, or are you now ONLY displaying listings from brokers when they have giving you a feed?
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Brian Rothenberg
Dustin,
The default search experience on Yahoo! Real Estate (‘Homes for Sale’ radio button) points to our Yahoo!-hosted listings database that is open to all brokers/franchisors.
We have a separate ‘MLS Listings’ radio button that allows our users to continue to search MLS listings in all major markets via Prudential’s IDX site.
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Dustin
Fascinating…
My guess is that most consumers wouldn’t get that distinction in that they probably don’t even know what “MLS” stands for… and myself, once I saw “homes for sale”, I never would have thought to look elsewhere for the “comprehensive” list of homes for sale.
Jim Reppond 12:34 pm on June 25, 2008 Permalink |
I LOVE how this confirms our branding status. You can’t get away with this type of satire unless the brand you imitate has major market penetration.
Dustin 6:41 pm on June 25, 2008 Permalink |
No doubt the CB brand carries a lot of weight.