Google Rumoured to be Hiring Online Real Estate Sales People
March 12, 2010 by Simon Baker · 5 Comments
Rumours emanating out of Sydney today indicate that Google is aggressively looking to hire a field sales team to target the Sydney real estate market. Sources said that Google had approached a number of sales people from domain.com.au in an effort to hire them as field sales people for the Google real estate initiative. Sources also believed that Google may be initially targeting the Inner West region of Sydney.
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Last Chance for Property Portal Watch Workshop
January 6, 2010 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
The Property Portal Watch Workshop is on next Tuesday in New York. This event brings together the owners and operators of market leading property portals to discuss the key issues facing their businesses.
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Join the Leaders at the Property Portal Watch Workshop
December 15, 2009 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
The free Property Portal Watch Workshop in New York is only 1 month away. This workshop brings together property portal leaders from around the world to discuss the key issues facing their businesses and the industry in general. Of course, Google is bound to be a hot topic of discussion.
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Google Real Estate in Europe – What is All the Fuss About? Lessons from Australia
December 4, 2009 by Simon Baker · 12 Comments
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.
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Register for Property Portal Watch Workshop and Enter Draw for Free Inman Tickets
November 19, 2009 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
There are only 2 days left to enter the draw for one of 15 free tickets to the Inman News’ Real Estate Connect conference in New York from the 13th – 15th January 2010. To be in the draw for these free tickets, all you have to do is register to attend the Property Portal Watch Workshop on Tuesday 12th January – the day before Real Estate Connect.
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Join the Leaders at the Property Portal Watch Workshop
November 17, 2009 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
What do immoscout24.de, seloger.fr and funda.nl have in common?
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Property Portal Watch Workshop is On Again in NYC
November 7, 2009 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
The highly successful Property Portal Watch Workshop is on again. We have teamed with the folks at Inman News to hold our third workshop on the 12th January 2010, just prior to the Real Estate Connect conference in New York, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square.
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Calling all iPhone Applications
October 20, 2009 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
iPhone applications are becoming an important distribution channel for property portals around the world. Some major sites are telling us that as much as 20% of their weekend visits are coming from their iPhone application while others are reporting large volumes of downloads from the iTunes store.
Any which way you cut it, mobile access to portal sites is coming of age.
The team here at Property Portal Watch plans to review the property portal applications on the market and to help us we need to know what applications there are out there.
Therefore, tell us about the property portal iPhone applications that you know by either commenting on this post or by sending an email to editor@propertyportalwatch.com.
It’s All About the Leads
October 14, 2009 by Simon Baker · 4 Comments
Property portals around the world are famous for talking up their numbers. Almost every week we receive press releases claiming one of two things – a portal is bigger or faster than everyone else in their market. The bigger claim is almost always followed by a Unique Browser, page view or visitor number while the faster claim is followed by some percentage growth between two arbitrary dates. This approach is reminiscent of newspapers touting circulation and readership.
While these are interesting, they are not that relevant outside of the industry and probably not that relevant to the people that matter most, the advertiser. They are measuring the inputs and not the outputs. What portals should be talking about is the number of leads they generate for the advertiser. This is the true measure of effectiveness. The problem is most portal sites just don’t know how many leads they really generate.
Top 25 Revenue Generating Portals
September 28, 2009 by Simon Baker · 9 Comments
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The true test of a leading portal site is not how many unique visitors or visits its receives but its ability to convert that traffic into revenue and eventually profit. The team at Classified Ad Ventures (owner of Property Portal Watch) has scoured the world and put together a list of the top 25 revenue generating property portal sites.
The top five sites are all market leaders, all generating over US$100m per year, and all profitable. The highest revenue generating site is immoscout24.de in Germany followed closely by realtor.com in the US. Rounding out the top 5 is soufun.com.cn in China, realestate.com.au in Australia and rightmove.co.uk in the UK.
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