Editor’s note: This blog item is reposted with permission from Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting. Click here to view the original.
Forget the RPR. If you’re interested in the future of real estate, you need to be watching Google closely these days.
A couple weeks ago we noted the company’s move to include a real estate overlay on Google Maps, which put listings smack-dab in front of millions of Google users who likely had no idea the company has spent the last several years quietly aggregating this content.
Now, today, search engine land reports that Google has taken this one step further to include a unique page for every listing that includes photos, a map (including Street View) property details, directions, transit information and more. It’s a listing detail page, basically.
And, of course, there’s advertising on these pages too.
Sure, Trulia, Zillow and a hundred other online real estate sites do this. But this is Google, folks — a force so large that it can upend entire categories overnight.
This development emerges from Google’s announcement two months ago of something called Place Pages, which the tech press largely interpreted as a threat to Yelp. Place Pages stitch together disparate Google parts into a neat hyperlocal resource.
Who is going to play Rupert Murdoch? Will revenue at the big online real estate sites decrease as the prominence of real estate on Google increases? How does the NAR feel about that ruling on scraping now?
Lots of questions here.
A few months ago I explained why I felt Google would never get serious about real estate.
I may have been wrong.
Copyright 2009 1000Watt Consulting
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