We all know the benefits of a killer domain name, but the online real estate market is so crowded and competitive it seems that all the great names are taken.  Instead of just placing a backorder for a domain and hoping, take a look at Mike Davidson’s post: How To Snatch An Expiring Domain.

He thoroughly examines the surprisingly complex world behind grabbing expired domains, referred to as “getting in on the Drop”.  The whole article is worth a read, and full of useful knowledge like the fact that domains don’t actually expire when they say they do:

If the owner of a domain does not renew by the expiration date of the domain, the domain goes into “expired” status. For 40 days, the domain is in a grace period where all services are shut off, but the domain owner may still renew the domain for a standard renewal fee….After 40 days are up, the domain’s status changes to “redemption period”. During this phase, all WhoIs information begins disappearing, and more importantly, it now costs the owner an additional fee to re-activate and re-register the domain…Finally, after the redemption period, the domain’s status will change to “locked” as it enters the deletion phase. The deletion phase is 5 days long, and on the last day between 11am and 2pm Pacific time, the name will officially drop from the ICANN database and will be available for registration by anybody.

Read the full walk through here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain#ixzz0hKldA6Dc

Perfect for busy, on the move real estate agents – Line2.com adds a second line to your iphone and allows you to make calls over 3G, Wifi and Cellular. From their website:

“Line2 adds a second number to your iPhone that works over 3G, WiFi or Cellular networks using the same number… an industry first. Ideal if you have poor cell reception or just want to reduce your cell bill.”

Here is a video from Line2.com’s CEO Peter Sisson:

Take a moment to check it out. The first 30 days are free to play around with it.

I’ve started putting together a few Wordpress tutorials and thought I would share.  This is a fantastic plugin that allows you to show introductory text, and the user can expand the text (on the same page) if they want to read more.  This way, you can keep your listings higher on the page for users that want to see those, and allow users that want to read more about an area or neighborhood to do so without leaving that page.  Nevertheless, here it is:

Today’s feature: An interview with Real Estate Webmasters CEO Morgan Carey about the SEO benefits of indexable IDX.  He reveals hard data on the resulting increased traffic, and the ability of individual agents to compete in the elusive quest for search results.

There’s been a lot of chatter about some of the newer listing scrapers and IDX wordpress plugins and what they can do, and what the value is or isn’t of having a spiderable IDX products.

I’m interested in this topic because I got a spiderable IDX in May of 2009 from Real Estate Webmasters. So far the numbers look good, but I want to know what the potential is, and whether people’s concerns about the topic have any validity. So, for my own research (and yours), I’ve decided to do a case study on my blog that looks at the effects of having a spiderable IDX on my site, and on sites that have higher authority than mine. I’d like to see where my traffic will be in a year or two!

Also, after reading all the posts at Active Rain and Geek Estate Blog, I decided to speak with Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters to see if he could answer some of the most common question/concerns regarding spiderable IDX.

Question: If I have an indexable IDX, will I get a duplicate content penalty if others also have an indexable IDX?
Answer: No, that’s a myth. From Google itself: “Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a ‘duplicate content penalty.’ At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that. Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.” Furthermore, although it is true that everyone is starting with the same “data set” – not everyone will implement it as effectively or in the same manner. Diversification and creativity makes having this kind of data hugely valuable if leveraged correctly.

Question: Will a spiderable IDX help my site compete with the big guns (Redfin, Trulia, Zillow etc.)?
Answer: Yes of course. It’s weird – folks seem to be thinking now that the “cat is out of the bag” about spiderable IDX (we have been doing it for over 6 years btw, it’s hardly new) that there is “no point” in having spiderable IDX because companies like Trulia or Zillow also have spiderable listings (many powered directly by MLS feeds),so don’t even try to compete. The fact of the matter is – there is a very small amount of these super powerful aggregators out there, and there are 10 spots on the first page of a search engine. Even if you couldn’t outdo these sites, why not be in the fray? #4 for any keyword on the first page is really not a bad place to be. That being said – although these sites from a “domain” perspective are very powerful – they must distribute this power to their most popular / desirable targets and cannot possibly dominate or even focus on all listings in all areas. Many times just by having a spiderable IDX and a decent site, our customers easily outrank the big guns on address and MLS # related searches. One thing is for sure – without spiderable IDX – you aren’t even on the field, let alone in the game.

Question: I have a high authority site, great rankings – if I add spiderable IDX how will this change my stats?
Answer: Well, check out Jay Thompson’s case study, or take Gary Ashton’s site. Gary got a spiderable IDX at the beginning of January, this year. You’ll notice the massive jump in the number of pageviews on his site:

His traffic’s also increased over the previous month by about 45%, while his bounce rate has dropped by 36%. Users are spending about 2 1/2 times as long on the site, and they’re exploring an average of 8 pages on the site, whereas before when he had an iframed solution, people were only visiting about 2 pages on the site.

Question: I have spiderable IDX and I only have a few hundred pages indexed – why not all of them?
Answer: Chances are you do not have the authority (domain) required to keep that many pages indexed. A solution is to improve your overall pagerank, and also work on your internal linking and architecture as much as possible to leverage the pagerank you do have. Still not the end of the world though – that’s probably 350 more pages driving traffic to your site than you would have had without it. Chin up – keep building links and working on your site structure, and your pagecount will reward you with a ton of long tail traffic over time.

Question: There are many websites (with as much or more pagerank as me) in my area that have spiderable IDX. How can I compete?
Answer: Again, build your authority / pagerank is step one – whoever has the most juice (domain) has the best chance. However, there is something to be said for differentiation & augmentation. If you can come up with creative ways to rewrite your information using algorithms (titles, meta data etc.) so as to provide a “different look” (layout) and additional information on the page, then your chances are far better to generate additional long tail traffic than those simply using “out of the box” spiderable IDX. Also try to find unique ways of getting your users involved – does your MLS allow after-listing comments? Why not have users contribute comments about their favorite listings, thereby adding valuable visitor-generated, “unique” content to the page?

Here’s a question brought up by Jeff Corbett: Does the SEO value evaporate, since everyone will effectively have the same content?
Answer: I would say that everyone needs to make sure that outside their IDX data, their site has unique, quality content, period. This will help differentiate your site from the rest of the pack. As for the listings themselves, as I mentioned above, you can modify your titles and meta data to make your listings different from everyone else’s. Focus on the basics of good SEO, and the listings will only help your site in the rankings–as well as improve user experience. BTW – unless you are in a market like Austin, TX where everyone seems to be on the ball (example http://www.jimolenbush.com), then chances are you only have to compete with 1, maybe 2 sites – again, although it’s not exactly a secret, it’s also not like anyone is taking advantage. How long exactly do you want to wait before everyone but you does have spiderable IDX and there is actually some competition? Life rewards originators.

Question: Is there anything people should be aware of before they decide to get a spiderable IDX?
Answer: Realtors should stay away from IDX vendors with RSS feeds – these people are violating the NAR’s guidelines with respect to their obligation as vendors to protect IDX data from scraping or misappropriation. If the MLS board was informed (and educated as to why) RSS should not be allowed, chances are they would pull the feed. Furthermore, any solutions (such as the DS IDX wordpress plugin Jay Thompson references in his post) – should be avoided as well. My feeling is that because these plugins put complete control into the hands of untrained webmasters with no regard for regulations or compliance, the various boards will very soon pull the feeds (and perhaps the vendor agreements) of those not adhering to the quality standards expected of IDX vendors. The boards already have enough problems with members reporting members on items that are not even real issues. Imagine what will happen to a board’s compliance staff once these IDX’s (now in the control of untrained webmasters / Realtors) start gaining popularity. The MLS board is going to have so many legitimate complaints, they will virtually become buried. They obviously don’t want that, which is why they have “approved” vendors and a compliance process in the first place. Any spiderable IDX company however that does have a compliance department, and is responsible and “accountable” with regards to the MLS boards’ terms of use should be fine.

As a new regular feature of Geek Estate blog, we will be shining a spot light on select real estate technology events. If you know of a technology related real estate event, please add it to the calendar.

Our first featured event is RE Tech South. This is the 3rd event for the Atlanta based conference. I had an opportunity to interview the event organizer, Brad Nix. Take a listen. If you’ve attended the event in the past, let us know what you think. Use the hashtag #retso to follow the event on Twitter.

No Flash? Click Here To Listen To .mp3.

Click Here To Subscribe To Podcast in iTunes

I would love to get some real hard facts from agents that are actually tracking stats with goals through analytics. Not just agents that think one way is better than the other based on their feelings and their comfort level, but real data. Most likely the agent that is not going to call somebody that signs up is going to feel that a voluntary sign up is better than requiring a user to sign up and the agent that loves calling users as they sign up is going to have the opposite opinion.

The goal here is to compare real stats to see how agents can convert more business from their sites. I would like to share some stats from my Hawaii site from goals we set up and we will hopefully get some agents contributing what they are doing and their stats.

Here is how my site works so you can get a better idea of the stats and what they represent: It allows the user to search easily and get results quickly. I then have it set up to load the actual property detailed page when they click on a property from the results to get more details. Then a light box sign up form is displayed to them. They can see what they are going to get. I think this is the most effective way if you are going to require a sign up.  (It can also be set up to let them view a few properties and then prompt the sign up process.  I ran A/B testing and found the way I am currently doing had a 4-5% higher sign up rate.)

Here is 2 months (end of last year) of stats with goals set up in Google Analytics:

Sign Up Form Displayed = 14,816

Sign Up Form Completed = 3682

Email Requests Submitted = 766

Actual sign ups were 26% and of those who signed up almost 21% sent in an email request about more information. That gave my team 3682 people to call and 766 to engage in further conversation about real estate. Plus we also had 3682 people now signed up getting daily email alerts of new properties, which will result in more contacts with the potential homebuyers and sellers. I truly believe the more chances you give yourself to make contact with your users the more sales you will be able to do.

I would be interested to see if anybody has some stats on either required or voluntary sign ups. I would really like to see some stats that somebody has been tracking on their voluntary sign up sites (Percentage of users to sign ups and percentage of those to email requests, etc….).

If you are not tracking these things you probably should start so you can make a business decision based on real stats instead of just feelings.

I just watched today’s Whiteboard Friday from Rand at SEOMoz and this week’s high level point is that brand power is going to lead to better SEO, and I certainly agree. If you have a stronger brand, you’re more likely to get a link, get re-tweeted, or clicked on in search results. I thought I’d share the video here since I think the topic is relevant to every real estate professional thinking about their personal brand and SEO (everyone should be THINKING about these two things to a degree):

What The Heck is #RETT?
About a week or so ago, I started noticing a hashtag associated with many of the posts in my social media stream, #RETT. Most of the posts were notices of meetings regarding RETT but nothing that revealed what it was. I assumed it was a local social media event of some flavor. Eventually, Justin McHood, one of the co-founders posted a link to a blog post on RETT. Another post proselytized as to how it would be a success. It brought my attention to what is arguably the one of brightest ideas in real estate in recent memory. The REAL ESTATE TECH TANK. RETT is a mash-up of sorts. Part RE Barcamp, part Tweet-Up, part business incubator, part think tank.

From Talk To Execution
Phoenix is home to RETT and it’s no accident that it resembles another valley area initiative known as Gangplank. Some of the RETT founders are avid participants in the Gangplank business incubator. They have discussed for some time applying the concept to the real estate industry. The decision was made less than two weeks ago to stop talking and start doing. Meetings at Gangplank have taken place several times since. Following the #RETT twitter stream has been interesting. It looks as if some folks have already been able to accomplish some things as a result of their RETT connections. Cool.

Still A Little Squishy
RETT is still in a very fluid stage but it’s amazing how quickly things are ramping up. I asked the co-founders to take some time to speak with me regarding RETT. What it is, what it isn’t and the future. I think it has the potential to be very successful. I’m also of the opinion it will require some strong leadership and formalization.

What Will It Take? My Two Cents
There are many reasons RETT could turn out to be a conundrum wrapped in abjection. Coherent guidelines and rules need to be established to prevent it from going down agenda laden paths that lead to several different kinds of hell. Getting everyone to agree in situations like this will take some damn good cat herders when it starts to approach critical mass.

What Do You Think?
Take a listen to the conversation and comment away. Let the RETT gang know what you think, ask questions, share your ideas and more. What do you think will make it work? What do you think the pitfalls to failure might be?

Click Here To Download .mp3

Subscribe In iTunes

I just finished reading Matthew’s post on ClickTale, and I’ve gotta say I’m pretty impressed; I’m pretty sure we’re all huge fans of real time analytics and the ability to watch an actual user session is amazing! We also had a great post on human aggregators on Twitter.

More and more Real Estate Professionals are becoming active on Twitter, so in the spirit of helping everyone here on Geek Estate become top human aggretators I figured I’d share a couple of my favorite Twitter Analytics programs.

1. Twitter Grader – Finally, a website that gives you a ranking 0-100 of how good your Twitter profile is!  Your Grade is based upon the number of followers, types of followers, number of tweets, etc.
2. Twiangulate – This is an awesome website that tells you the followers in common between 2 or even 4 profiles!  Talk about being able to quickly social network with your friends’ followers!
3. Twitgraph – Shows detailed graphs of your most popular links, most used words, and retweets!
4. TweetPsych – Interested in the psychology behind your tweets?  This website creates a psychological breakdown of your updates, including how negative, emotional, and thoughtful your tweets are!
5. TwitterAnalyzer – Do you want to know how active a user truly is?  How about how many people actually retweet your tweets?  This analyzer offers charts and tons of info!

Retweet / Comment if you find this post useful!

I looked up from my computer to see HAR president Tracy Stice sifting through an organized mess of papers on his desk.

“So what do you think about RPR (Realtors Property Resource)?” Tracy asks.

“Well that depends if they get property data from MLS’s,” I say. Tracy smiles and I realize he knows something I don’t. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve added a new feature to Geek Estate Blog. The Real Estate Technology Event Calendar. Our goal is to maintain the “go to” resource for the ever growing list of technology related events for real estate professionals.

Use the form on the Calendar page to submit your event for consideration. Your event must be technology or social media related and specific to real estate. Please include dates, web links, location and short bio of what attendees should expect. If you’re charging for your event please include ticket pricing.

Creating A Conduit Toolbar for Internet Browsers

Conduit.com is a site that allows you to create a “custom” toolbar that works with popular Internet browsers like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.  The toolbar can be custom created from scratch, then offered as an additional tool allowing users a direct interface or “Conduit” to the most valuable and important segments and links of your Blog or website.

Having a custom toolbar available to readers can add extra value to those who regularly visit your site.  By adding this toolbar to your browser, or creating your own custom toolbar, users can access the important information or areas of your site they want to know more about without having try and find it on your site.  The only question and challenge for you is, what should you add to the toolbar to make it the most useful and powerful tool for your readers?

Creating a custom toolbar at Conduit.com is fast and easy, and the best part is that it’s FREE.  Imagine having your customized toolbar installed on millions of browsers across the web. It would not only provide extra value to your readers, but could increase the traffic and exposure to your site.

Here is a sample of one I created for GeekEstateBlog, you might want one of these for your site or Blog.

Try the toolbar on your browser, then Click Here, to create one of your own.
Select Your Browser Below To Download The Geek Estate Blog Toolbar.