Are You Syndicating Your Listings?

For a second there I thought Greg was anti-syndication. (I guess it was the title of the video.) I haven't really run into much anti-syndication sentiment mostly ignorance about the how and why of listing syndication. Have other folks heard anti-syndication arguments?

We've mainly heard anti-syndication sentiments here in Miami. The old-fashioned attitude that "it's MY listing, you come through me and only me to see it". A very closed minded attitude which seriously limits both exposure and potential sales.

ZipvoGreg:

I'm not arguing with you - just sharing the other side with Geek Estate readers.

It's not about total traffic to the website. It's about traffic to the individual listing. The client only cares how many people are viewing 'their listing'. So, if a Realtor's personal website gets 26 hits for a specific listing in a given day or week and the T, Z< FD, et all generate 1 or 2 hits, then your argument for traffic suddenly carries less weight. When you factor the dilution of ads from other agents/services/properties on the same page as the client listing on syndicated sites, then you have even more arguments for stopping syndication. Finally, most syndication sites do not have the same amount of listings as a local Realtor's IDX solution. Therefore, the buyer consumer has a great chance of missing a property that could be perfect for them. This is why agents are considering stopping syndication.

Hey Brad,
I understand your point, but honestly please tell me how you intend to generate traffic to your listing / website. A large percentage of these people that are having a problem with IDX Syndication are most likely the ones that don't believe in Social Media as well!

Why should you, the "Selling" Agent care what ads or etc are on an IDX Site? Lets use Zillow or Trulia for comparison sake. Are you really discounting the 6 to 7 MILLION UNIQUE visitors a month? Cause Google defiantly doesn't!

Perhaps the goal / thought (by Realtors) needs to be to get your listings the eyeballs it needs and then potential people interested in you and your "content" will stay / bookmark your site? I mean what is the difference REALLY between Zillow and the Newspaper? It's "traditional media" vs. "New Media" and if you ask me I will go with the New.

That is right, it is the listing agencies listing and even more important. It is the sellers home and they hired them to sell it and get it exposed. When are are these old fashion agents going to grow up?

As I have mentioned before. I have never met a seller that did want as much exposure as possible.

I mean this statement says it all.... "As I have mentioned before. I have never met a seller that did want as much exposure as possible." I would have to agree!

We even syndicate our open house postings using http://www.OpenHomez.com . It saves a bunch of time and gets us a much wider distribution than we can get by ourselves. And, the links all come back to our listing sites. Something to consider. Broader distribution, more eyeballs, more traffic, more potential buyers at the open house.

LAR

Greg:

You know I'm a 'New Media' guy and run a New Media Brokerage, and we syndicate to all of these sites. I am simply playing devil's advocate to further the conversation. If I were against syndication, here's how I would answer your questions...

Why should you, the “Selling” Agent care what ads or etc are on an IDX Site? - Ads for apartments, other agents, or similar properties would all detract/distract the attention from my Seller's property to competing sources and this makes my Seller unhappy about being 'syndicated' to compete with third party ads.

Are you really discounting the 6 to 7 MILLION UNIQUE visitors a month? - It's irrelevant how many visitors go to the home page of T, Z, R, FD. All my Seller cares about is views on his/her property and generally this is way less than views from the agent's own website or idx solution.

I mean what is the difference REALLY between Zillow and the Newspaper? Apples and Oranges as the "traditional" printed newspaper does not compete with me for keywords in Google. If I can win 'Woodstock Real Estate' or '123 Main Street' in Google, then why do I need to give T, Z, or R my content so they outrank me for the same terms and then sell ads around my Seller's data?

Also, see http://www.skyrealtyaustin.com/blog/why-we-no-l...

Brad,

I clearly understand your point. Yes, on some of these "ad based" site models the call to action is the ad. I am not advocating it to be great to have an ad next to your listing but, realize that when you're dealing with a 8,000 pound gorilla next to you wouldn't it make sense to use him for what it's worth? If your Seller isn't happy with that, then yes don't do it. But, are Realtors assuming that there Seller doesn't want this? I would argue that most Seller would be looking at you crazy if you told them that you don't syndicate to these sites.

Regarding traffic, all I am saying is that to get 5 to 7 Million unique a month isn't nothing to sneeze at! I am crystal clear on the fact that doesn't equate exactly to listing views. But, it's a serious amount of people. Then, if you're active in that "Social Network" blogging and answering questions I know for a fact Realtors get business from that. I've meet with a Realtor that told me 30% of his business came from blogs and answering questions on ActiveRain. There are many like that.

The "average" Realtor might not be concerned about Google Juice and mainly concerned about getting the maximum exposure to that listing to SELL that property ASAP! I'm just really interested in knowing what happens when you tell your potential sellers I don't syndicate to these sites cause I am "scared" of being out ranked by them. I think this is a question for Sellers to answer!

Contrarion view once again, but still factual statements...

The majority of Sellers I speak to on a daily basis have no idea what a Zillow or Trulia is, much less care if their property data is on those sites. They do know Realtor.com, but most Sellers work with agents because of their local presence and proven competence in the local market. In the world of New Media - often this confidence is earned by ranking highly for local search terms. In fact, I don't know of any single listing my company has ever received BECAUSE we syndicate to Z, T, FD, et al. Getting business from blogging and answering consumer questions is a different conversation from syndicating content. We most certainly gain business daily from using social networks, including blogs.

On a side note, done playing devil's advocate (for now)...
I would love to hear what the membership fee would have to be if Z or T charged for membership and agreed to not up-sell property placement or sell ads. Basically, what would it cost for Realtors to self-fund an ad free R.com? I bet you'd have a line of new members willing to pay for this service, I just have no idea what it would cost to run. Drew, can you chime in with a guesstimate?

Would you just want no ads on your specific listing detail page, or are you wondering how much it would cost for realtors to keep all ads off the entire site? Those are two very different potential scenarios.

"Where the eyeballs are" is very important. Realtors shouldn't fear adverts or other properties. For every user who is looking for your EXACT home, there will be many more who are tempted by your home because it's a little bit different from what they were looking for. It's fuzzy search. Sure you'll loose some people to other noise (how committed were they in the first place...), but having your property available to as many eyes as possible is always the best policy.

Drew:

I'd love to the hear the numbers both ways, but let's assume No Advertising whatsoever for the sake of this discussion. I do believe the vast majority of Realtors will be fine with movers, inspectors, attorneys, lenders, and other support services to the real estate transaction but most are just sick and tired of being upsold on R.com and forced to spend more to feature a listing. Or worse yet, have their competition from across town have an ad pop-up next to their own listing. I think most NAR members would like for NAR to buy back R.com or to partner with T & Z for a new web solution. The question is... what would that cost?

They need to make a buck or they will not be able to exist. You are currently getting free advertising.

We’ve mainly heard anti-syndication sentiments here in Miami. The old-fashioned attitude that “it’s MY listing, you come through me and only me to see it”. A very closed minded attitude which seriously limits both exposure and potential sales.

Brad-
As much as I'd love to make up a number, I'll be frank - no good is going to come from me spouting off a $$ value. My suggestion if you really think NAR wants to discuss something like what you are proposing is to tell the senior execs at NAR to talk to the senior execs here at Zillow.

Drew:

I understand position and respect the response. I really think there is something to this approach and will do my best to elevate it to national attention. I just think it would be helpful for me to get attention from above if I knew the numbers were even feasible. I believe there are over 1 MM NAR members almost 2 MM licensed agents in this country. It just seems a national service giving the members what they want (and paid for by the members themselves) would be a fantastic solution. Thanks for this topic and thread of conversation.

I look forward to meeting IRL sooner than later. Any chance you'll be at REBCPHL?

"Any chance you’ll be at REBCPHL?"

Yup, I'll be there. I'm actually traveling for the next few weeks - Philly, DC, NYC, Boston, and Chicago.

Let's make sure to find each other at REBCPHL and share a beer, chat, or both!

One Zillion Dollars.

OK, just kidding. ;)

I think not syndicating your listings to top real estate sites is a huge mistake for any broker, and they risk losing agents and clients over that decision. Buyers and sellers don't care about the ins and outs of our industry. All sellers want to do is sell their home. And all buyers want to do is see listings. What's good for the consumer will eventually win out.

CAR data says that 73% of sellers use Zillow (89% use R.com), while only 26% of sellers use real estate company websites. So sellers clearly use Zillow and will be upset at their listing agent if they don't see their home on a top site like Zillow.

Case in point: Zillow now gets about 400K-500K monthly uniques in the Seattle area, so our "circulation" is larger than the Seattle Times' print circulation. And all of our traffic is real estate related! Putting listings in the paper costs a lot of money; syndicating listings to Zillow is free.

My adamant opinion is that brokers and agent should put their listings on sites that have consumer traffic. They should only make exceptions when those sites do things that they find so egregious or unreasonable from a business standpoint that they just can't come to terms with a partnership.

I feel like I just got scolded by my moms. :)

Brad: While it is unlikely you will be contacted by qualified buyers in need of a buyer's agent through Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, most buyers DO use these sites for research. So, while I would not pay to display my listing on them, they are additional exposure. Furthermore, the framable content is free and reinforces my relationship with my clients as a trusted information resource. There is little reason NOT to syndicate (not taking advantage of maximum marketing exposure and attempting to drive traffic to your own website and capture both sides is a disservice to your listing client)

I only wish we, as agents, demanded more for our listings. Tools such as free CRM and agent profile pages with SEO admin tools.

Spencer:
The majority of those 500k unique visitors are current home owners checking the value of their own house. (Last I heard the average time on the site was under 30 seconds) The actual number of qualified buyers is much lower. Zillow launched with a premise it knew would attract the greatest number of users, zestimates. Because its advertising model was based strictly on total traffic numbers, it didn't care if visitors were serious buyers/sellers. Only recently has the company began to shift to offer information far more valuable that zestimates. This attracts a smaller, but more qualified audience. However, as long as Zillow leads its marketing with 'zestimates' as it does with it's iPhone application, the numbers will be highly misleading.
Of the three major search sites, Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com, clearly Zillow has the least qualified users. Then again, if you are using Zillow as one of many marketing channels as outlined in a listing presentation, the only thing that matters to your client is maximum exposure.

Drew:
I suspect the national input system NAR just showed was designed to give them the option of syndicating to Trulia and Zillow and abandon Realtor.com. As MLS' consolidate, they will get into the business of licensing data in large geographic chunks. NAR is heading them off in this effort and abandoning a website, that despite massive amounts of display advertising, is not profitable.

Kristen,
Sorry to tell you but you're wrong.

Zillow gets 9 million unique visitors per month. The CEO of Realtor.com (Erroll Samuelson) spoke at a conference today in San Diego with me and said they get 10 million uniques per month. Zillow is growing 72% year-over-year so it's just a matter of time before Zillow becomes the #1 real estate website. In addition, Zillow has the #1 real estate iphone application with over 400,000 downloads in the first 7 weeks alone. We think that's more than twice the #2 real estate app.

2/3 of our users say they're in the market to buy or sell a home either now or in the near future. 25% of our visitors say they use Zillow as their "primary home shopping site". We get over 15 pageviews per visitor and send millions of free clicks to our brokerage partners' websites each month. In addition, there's very little overlap between brokerage sites and Zillow -- there are two customer segments (those that use broker sites and those that use real estate search sites like Zillow). According to Nielsen, 3 out of 4 visitors to ColdwellBanker.com (the #1 brokerage site according to Nielsen) don't goto Zillow in the same month. And the overlap is even smaller with small brokerage sites. So don't assume that just because your listings are on MLS/IDX sites that Zillow's buyers are finding them.

If agents want their listings to be seen by the millions of buyers using Zillow.com and Zillow on the iphone, they need to have their listings on Zillow.

Also, remember that it's free for an agent or broker to put their listing onto Zillow.

Spencer, do you guys use Nielsen? I've always used comScore/Media Metrix as the baseline for looking at data for sites within a niche.

We use Nielsen and Hitwise, but also occasionally look at Comscore. They all have various strengths and weaknesses (and costs).

For most of our stuff we use Omniture which looks at our internal numbers rather than a representative panel. Those are the numbers I trust the most, and when we cite stats like "8.9M UU, 72% growth year-over-year", that's from Omniture.