Google Maps new real estate search facility
Google announced on the 6th July that they were offering NZ a new search feature – “search real estate listings on Google maps” – this service can be found as a part of Google maps as opposed to the standard Google search.
Google takes feeds from real estate websites and portals to provide a comprehensive overview of property in an area of the country – here is a view of Hamilton
The search results only show a few properties on the left hand side – otherwise you have to click on each red dot to see the property details and photos.
We took the decision on day 1 to feed all of the listings we have from our 1,160 customers representing 93% of all licensed offices to Google for the benefit of all customers. This amounted to some 100,000 listings (we do not feed business listings). Google is incredibly popular search engine with around 85% of all searches in NZ done on Google. We provide this service free for all subscribing offices meaning that your listings can be seen by an enormous worldwide audience – all for free. We are currently the only website outside of company sites feeding such content to Google – we want to help you gain greatest exposure for your client’s listings.
One very important fact to remember with any of your listings is that if you do not provide an address or allow an address to be shown on a listing then it will not show on any mapping – be that a map on realestate.co.nz so please display the address for your listing.
We currently have around 60% of all listings with a display address – in today’s world with Google maps, satellite imagery and Google StreetView – the question has to be asked as to why would you not display the address?
Just so that you know that I am not alone on this matter – this recent post by Paul Middleditch from Harcourts in Christchurch makes a genuine plea “C’mon fellow consultants – do the basics, please!“
July 20 2009 | Online marketing | 5 Comments »