What do google and property portals have in common?  They are both sources of buyer and seller leads for agents.  Therefore, in many respects, to an agent advertising, google and portal sites are substitutes.  Now portal sites have grown rapidly because they are easier for agents to use.  They take the listings and return email leads … that is easy.  For an agent to get the most from google, they need to have their own site, optimise it for SEO, implement an SEM campaign and then once they have traffic to their site, convert this traffic to email leads.  Not as easy as it sounds.

Therefore, for google to be a real threat, it has to make it as easy for agents to advertise their listings, the agents have to adopt advertising on google (SEO and SEM) and it has to deliver similar results. 

Google will better integrate litings into their search results – there is no doubting this.  They will develop tools to make it easier for agents to get their listings on line however the portals will also make sure that their listings are in the mix too, therefore the results for the agents will probably be better from portals sites (which have direct traffic too).

Yes there will be a movement of some traffic from portals sites to agents directly however there is more to life than google and portals will continue to be a major source of leads for agents for a long time to come.

Google is potential competitor for each vertical business in general.

Streght of Google 90% of market reach is definitly a problem and more important is that they are taking big money from portals….just for fun…

Yes Google is not solution for portals, but also it is a bad solution for people who are trying to find a home + realy bad solution for agencies.

Alastair, good to hear from you.

I agree that Google is less of a threat to portal sites than some of them think.  Google really is focusing on the consumer and providing the best results possible to any question someone ask them.  Therefore they will continue to improve the quality of search results by better incorporating the actual listings into the search results.  Now the problem Google has is working out who is a trusted source for listings.  It is easier for them to look at one site (e.g. rightmove / realestate.com.au) and see that they are a trusted source than a single agent's site with only a few listings.

The challenge for the Portals will be when the franchise groups better compete with them for SEO traffic.  The franchise groups have enough listings to capture some of the SEO traffic currently being captured by the portals.  Therefore the portals will just have to get better at SEO and hope they outperformn the franchise group sites on the SEO stakes.

SEO continues to be a journey rather than a destination.

Simon Baker