Vebra Blocks globrix.com
November 4, 2008 by Emma Sorensen
Last week Vebra blocked the globrix.com crawler from picking up properties from Vebra hosted agents.
globrix.com say in a blog update that the crawler has been operating for over a year, and yet Vebra are “insisting that a charge is levied for a feed on the grounds that crawling disrupts their service (the reality being that the Globrix crawler mimics one single user slowly clicking through all Vebras agents which is very little traffic)”.
globrix.com say the costs currently under discussion are “prohibitively expensive” and “somewhat unfair” as globrix.com are providing what they consider to be a value added service in the form of free traffic for Vebra.
Vebra includes the software and marketing company vebra.info as well as the portal vebra.com and is owned by GMG Property Services, a division within Guardian Media Group. GMG also own thinkproperty.com and coresystems.co.uk. Last week we reported that thinkproperty.com was rumoured to be changing to a free-to-list model.
As the situation stands “all agents who host their properties with Vebra will not be receiving free traffic from globrix.com”, while globrix.com and Vebra continue their negotiations.
- globrix.com and Vebra Reach Agreement
Free-to-list real estate search engine globrix.com announced on Friday that negotiations have concluded with Vebra, bringing to an end the software provider’s block on the globrix.com crawler....
- Managing Director Departs Vebra
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- globrix.com Adds PropertyAdd
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- thinkproperty.com Free-to-List Growth
Late last year thinkproperty.com changed to a free-to-list model and it already looks to be paying off for the UK portal, with the company reporting that the number of agents listing on the portal has risen....
- thinkproperty.com Rumored to be Going Free
If reports in the property press are correct, thinkproperty.com is about to become free-to-list. The change couldn’t be more timely as agents protest high listing fees and free-to-list portals and search sites gain in number and popularity. Estate Agent Today broke the news on Friday, reporting that it is the first time a property portal has changed from pay-to-list, to become free. ...
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Defies belief, stop your agents getting free traffic when they are desperate for leads, charge the site who was sending the traffic and then no doubt charge the agents for traffic they would otherwise have got for free.
Whats next, charging google for the same thing, I think not?
Strikes me as an attempt to protect http://www.thinkproperty.com, sure to backfire
It’s about time that estate agents focused their attention on the rip-off perpetrated by their estate agency management software/application providers. Most will charge a portal a disproportionate upload fee. The true cost is miniscule.
I’m sure Globrix will be placing their own slant on this dispute.
I think there is a genuine concern which needs addressing over the mass scale availability of uncontrolled data in the property market.
I am one of the agents who received a letter from Vebra explaining the issue and in fairness it does seem reasonable.
There are plenty of free sites and I would suggest the NAEA would be a very good alternative.
I for one, would be very unhappy seeing my properties spread far and wide without control and with scraping tools there is a real risk unless controlled
Indeed, it costs nothing to upload property to portals. This was one reason we came into the market, we couldn’t see how management providers could justifiably charge for uploads, limit the amount of pictures uploaded, limit the portals they uploaded to etc. For too long, too many have been ripping off the agent.
Mass scale data movement is an expensive business and having knowledge of most sectors i believe you will find it is standard practice to levy a charge.
It happens in the job marketplace with Conkers and Broadbean both owned by DMGT the parent of Findaproperty and PrimeLocation. It also happens i believe in automotive with the Autotrader group.
Providing a reliable solution to portals much be a requirement in the same way as every other market otherwise the service would not exist.
I have used Vebra and a few other providers and none of them charged me for this service – they all have arrangements with the portals direct so they say. Scraping sound difficult and risky to me
when someone walks through an agencies door, they welcome them with open arms without worrying about where they have come from, why is the internet any different. If someone was going to send me quality business leads for nothing I’d bit their hand off. M – would be interesting to hear Vebras spin on this?
The whole point of the internet is free and easy access to and communication of data. Vebra’s actions are tantamount to Chinese restrictions on internet use out of paranoia and self defence. What possible “risk” can there be to an agent having his properties displayed on a new free site which, many people seem to forget, actually directs ALL its visitors away from its site to the specific property details on the agents OWN site, where the information will be more accurate and up to date than on any “portal”. Globrix is a professional organisation backed by substantial resources. It is committing more money and resource to promoting itself to the public than thinkproperty.com or any other free site.
Vebra does not have its client’s interests held first and foremost. It is a large scale market “buy-up”operation which has a reputation for ignoring its clients wishes.
Unless Vebra changes its outdated approach to business and ethics, its big bully tactics will not make it last forever and it will eventually start to wither and die, as all non-competitive organisations ultimately do.
I am all for healthy competition, but for Vebra to actually spend time and money restricting free leads to its clients websites is nothing short of outrageous profiteering.
Every penny Globrix is forced to pay Vebra is coming directly out of funds they could be spending promoting and developing the site.
As long as Globrix provides free traffic to agents websites, and continues to strive to improve its service, it deserves the number one spot in online property search.
Very interesting discussion…
It’s perfectly fair enough for a software provider to charge for feeding data to the portals. As Jay points out above, there are real costs (when you get to high scale – which none of the free software providers have yet reached) and those costs need to be met.
That said there are different ways that these costs can be met. Some of the free software providers (of which Charlie above, and we at http://www.homeflow.co.uk are examples), have chosen to provide the feeds to Globrix (and PropertyLive) for free. Homeflow have done this in a bid to gain market share against more established estate agency software systems, not because we think it costs us nothing. We swallow the costs – it’s essentially just a marketing cost for our products.
The costs are however not huge – and certainly not at the level that some of the larger software vendors seek to charge their clients. They’re treating it as an opportunity to eek a bit more money out of the system for their businesses in what is an equally tough market for them. If agents are having a tough time, just think how hard it is for the guys trying to sell to agents!
And that’s what this argument is all about.
Vebra (or GMG) are watching the likes of Rightmove making stellar profits (hats off to them), and watching Globrix ripping through the market making waves in their bid to disrupt Rightmove, and they’ve drawn their battle lines. They’re not the only ones.
The next few months are going to be very interesting, as Globrix and Vebra (and PropertyLive and other software vendors) start to engage in various largely under cover trade PR battles.
Anyone who wants to avoid the fight – give us a call!
automated link manager…
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[...] Read our earlier story on Vebra blocking the globrix.com crawler here. [...]
Its just not true that there is no cost associated with uploading to the portals, over 50% of most software providers helpdesk calls are all to do with issues with portals.
I would point out that this is by no means just the new ones and the established players are equally as culpable in not having the best support teams.
But why should a software provider have to solve their issues without recompense, it simply hampers their own more important requirement of supporting the software they provide.
By all means have a pop when its warranted but to simply claim that there’s no work involved in these feeds is simplistic and naive.
This discussion is interesting.
Many of the portals have made significant investment in marketing and rechnology to get the number of listings they have.
Why would you want to allow a scraper free access to your listings and eventualy build a business that competes with you useing your data?
Any portal owner allowing this without a formal and compensated arrangement is surely undermining their own business model.