Is Google Personalized Search A Threat To Real Estate Websites

propertyportalwatch.com welcomes a guest post from Nicholas Marr on how Google’s new search could spell bad news for online agents.

Nicholas Marr is CEO and founder of Marr International, the company behind UK based overseas property website homesgofast.com, which has been running since 2003. Nicholas is also a lifetime property investor who has a passion for international real estate, and appears on Television show ‘Ask the Property Expert’ on Overseas Property TV.

There is a quite revolution going on and its right here at your computer and it may well affect your real estate business online. Google is changing the way search engines present their results. No longer is it one size fits all, now you will be served a more personalized search result. The results you receive when searching for say “property in united states” are very likely to be different to the ones that I receive conducting the same search query.

You will be put in a group
You and I will be grouped into different populations, and will be presented with a lists of results for a query in an order based upon past user behaviour of other members of that population.

The good news is that spammers who falsely achieve better rankings via unethical means will no longer benefit and that you may be presented with more accurate search results.

The existing Google algorithm which worked out how it would rank a certain website was based on a limited set of variables. Linking is an example, websites that had good one way links ranked better than others. The new system has increased the variables and consequently ranking is now likely to be less important as it is only one of a many new variables

The Bad News
The bad news that makes me nervous is the unknowns, how will this effect real estate website that lists property in more than one US state or with property abroad. How will the search results react to a person in the New York seeking property in Florida. Will the New York based property websites take precedence over the Florida or overseas websites?

Google has the power
Some may say that this change has come at a time when online businesses are suffering with the global slowdown and now real estate professional are set with another hurdle to get over. I am sure the debate about Google having too much power and the ability to make or break at the change of its tactics will continue.

Ranking not important anymore
For those that have worked hard to rank their property related websites the fear is that ranking may be dead! What is the point of being No.1 for your cherished search term when each user is presented with different search results?

What the experts say
Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc. “Ranking is dead,” says Bruce, recalling his words from his presentation. Going forward, he says you’re going to have to look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc. SEOs will have to ask themselves questions like: Did I get the conversion I was after? Did I really deliver on the promise of SEO?

Bruce thinks that in the first six months of 2009, we’re going to see a lot more implementation of behaviour and intent-based search leading to a mindset of “ranking is dead, and traffic is all that matters.”

Matt Cutts of Google Cutts said, “I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.’”

Bill Slawski of www.seobythesea.com says “What this might mean for searchers is that Google might show you results in an order based upon what it thinks might interest you the most, based upon whatever information it can collect about you, and based upon what people whom it believes share population information with you found interesting enough to look at in the past.

What this might mean for site owners is that the search engine might rank your pages higher for some populations of searchers and lower for other populations of searchers based upon a wider range of information than just whether your site is relevant for specific query terms”.

A conclusion
What ever the outcome its certainly change that may make the search experience more accurate for users. Real estate professionals will need to monitor how this will change their business online it may prove the best thing Google ever did

Interesting reading on this matter
How Google Might Personalize Search Results Outside of Personalize Search
Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?
Google Ramps Up Personalized Search

By Nicholas Marr
CEO of Marr International the company behind overseas property website homesgofast.com

1. Real Estate Search on Google Maps

   Today Google added property listings to its already extensive range of features for Google Maps in Australia....

2. Real Estate Added to Google Maps – What it Means for Australian Property Portals

   In Australia and the US, Google has added properties for sale to its mapping site – maps.google.com. Users of Google Maps are now able to see a selection of homes for sale and rent plotted on the maps. These homes for sale seem to be sourced from Google Base – Google’s classifieds engine. It is free for anyone to upload a listing and this can be done through an online interface or through an XML data feed. The inclusion of property listings from Google Base onto Google Maps has some parts of the Australia real estate world abuzz with thoughts of the end of market leaders’ realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. However, while this launch is new and innovative in the Australian market, a lot has to fall in place before realestate.com.au and domain.com.au are truly affected by the “entry” of Google into the Australian real estate advertising scene....

3. Google Real Estate in Europe – What is All the Fuss About? Lessons from Australia

   The news yesterday that Google was “entering” the UK/European market sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. The Seloger share price closed down 5.7% at €23.50 while the Rightmove share price was hammered a whopping 10.3% to 499.9p. So let’s look at what happened. An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia. Did Google really have that much impact on the Australian market?...

4. Google Reveals Real Estate “Vision”

   Since Google first began adding real estate listings to Google Maps in mid-2009, the world of online real estate has been monitoring the company's every move. Each upgrade brought more speculation on how Google was planning to change things for property portals, real estate agents, and property hunters. Now, we have a clearer idea of where Google is headed....

5. The Challenges for Google Real Estate

   The launch of Google Real Estate search on Google Maps in Australia, the US and New Zealand has shaken the property portal world. It is expected that Google Real Estate will make an appearance in the UK and German markets shortly. Last week we published our initial thoughts on what the launch of Google Real Estate will mean for the existing portal sites in Australia. These thoughts are equally applicable for portal sites around the world. Having followed the debate about Google Real Estate and its potential impact on portal sites, we thought it would be good to outline what we believe has to fall into place for Google to truly impact the property portal market leaders around the world....