Google Maps Missing the Mark
July 21, 2010 by Alice Allan
In this guest post, homethinking.com founder Niki Scevak shares his thoughts on what Google needs to do to make its mark on real estate search:
Google is a company you might think would succeed in an area like real estate: The problem involves aggregating, cleansing and being able to search across hundreds of thousands of sources. And that’s why whenever the firm announces something related to real estate, competitors freeze with fear and the media loves to cover it.
Consumers, however, simply have not cared for many years. Considering the core values of Google, being the default homepage of the majority of Internet users and the oodles of ‘smart’ engineers, that’s a pretty big flop.
And why have they failed thus far? I believe it’s because they are too wedded to the concept of real estate = maps. The renaissance of real estate web sites in 2005-2006 were all led by ‘Maps mashups’ because that was new at the time (AJAX was gaining mainstream developer awareness) and it was assumed that they helped users find real estate in a quicker and easier way.
But you don’t see maps that often as the primary way to search in real estate. Trulia, best known for being one of the most outstanding instances of Google Maps integrations when it launched, now de-emphasizes the map as a primary way to find property and instead uses it as a secondary tool to provide context. Zillow, another successful site, is a counter-example and still prominently uses maps as a way to find property.
Maps have a large impact on page load and so pages load slower. Users have a vociferous appetite for information at this stage of their lives and slow loading pages just piss them off. People may scorn Craigslist but one of the reasons they are so successful is that they have identified the most important user requirement and added little else.
Also, the most important component of real estate search is not the location but photos. In my mind, it makes more sense for Google’s real estate efforts to be housed within Google Images rather than Google Maps. Something more like PicClick (a visual search engine for products) or Like.com are more innovative in user interface design.
Google will never be successful in real estate until they recognize that Maps are a poor cousin to other types of user interface designs for real estate. But there is no suggestion that the deeply seated belief within the organization will change anytime soon.
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Agreed, if Google want to do research on this they should get out and stand near the window of a bricks and mortar real estate agency – people stand there scanning listings, with things like nice photos and price/bedrooms grabbing their attention most – its typical scanning behaviour like people in a video store, bookstore or music store. I have no evidence to prove it, but I am sure people scan the same way online with 20-30 listing summaries per page and drill down (i.e. click) when they are interested in something.
Personally, I don’t need to visualise listings in a geographical sense until I am way into the shortlisting, and usually I will already know exactly where the street/building is so the map becomes irrelevant.
Having said that, a map would be a good visual aid when showing a summary or information page on an entire geographical area such as location of schools in a suburb or location of a suburb in a greater metro area.
Mike H
“if Google want to do research on this they should get out and stand near the window of a bricks and mortar real estate agency”…….
Why do people stand and look at a particular agency window?
Because they are
a) curious about prices and what is available in the area
or
b) they have already selected that area as somewhere of interest.
If you were a potential buyer moving to a new town or city – would you look at the pretty pictures online first – only to discover the property was 100 miles away?
If you wanted to live in a certain neighbourhood – would you look at images of houses first – or would you search for property in that area, before looking for “nice” homes?
To argue that “you don’t see maps that often as the primary way to search in real estate” suggests that you mean ’searching within an agency platform or portal’. Maybe. But serious buyers will search on location before looking at pictures.
The reality is that in most cases location is the premier driving force in selecting real estate – which is why “maps” are so powerful. It is also why, when looking at an online “agency window”, visitors will probably have already selected the location – either through prior knowledge of the area – or via looking at a map.
People don’t phone an agency to say: “I want a pretty house”. They say: “I want a house in Location X or Y with four bedrooms, views of the mountains and a double garage”. They have already selected the area(s) of interest. And if you are looking for real estate in a certain area – what could be easier than calling it up on a map – before deciding if it has the right type of kitchen fittings?
Google Real Estate will become the the most important route for marketing homes and commercial property – because it is simple and can show buyers what is available in the area they want to locate in. Pretty pictures within property portals or estate agents websites will come later.
Google Maps missing the mark? I don’t think so.
I think its very early days to judge the success of google in the Real Estate/ property vertical. The first time I heard about google was in 1998 when a lot of people were still using the AOL search that came with an ADSL broadband connection on a CD. How many poeple use AOL or Lycos for search now?
Google have been quiet in announcing their plans. Looking South towards Australia a recent article said that the entrance of Google accounted for a 5% redirection of traffic for a certain portal.
If a new supermarket opened in the UK and took 5% footfall from Sainsbury’s or Tescos in the first year I think they’d be worried. Especially if it was one of the world’s biggest companies with deep pockets and a history of success.
I agree that users don’t use maps for search and prefer the familiar format of a a text search followed by a list and singale page adverts with photos and details.
The way google stores and uses property/ real estate data means that mashup sites like The Big Property List can take the data and display it in a familiar portal style format.
The biggest criticism of google has been the display format of the data on a map – will this be the difference?
Possibly Google has missed the mark because of its own robot like functionality. In spite of horror stories about some agents people still like to go window shopping and like the agent to take their hand and walk them around. I personally hope that this will continue: it’s the way I do my business.
Its getting there steadily, but still hasn’t quite made its mark. I can’t wait for it to sync up with Google Earth!