Posts by Jay Thompson

Back on December 23, I wrote an article here on GeekEstate Blog about a WordPress plugin that Diverse Solutions was developing that would allow IDX listings to be fully indexed by search engines. Earlier this week, the plugin came out of beta testing and has been released for general availability. Here is part of the [...]

Last night, Diverse Solutions announced their new plugin, dsIDXpress (currently in beta testing). I’ve been fortunate to be an early tester of this plugin, and can sum its potential up in one word: Awesome. Radical. Kick ass. OK, that’s four words. Work with me… What dsIDXpress does, in a nutshell, is create search engine indexable [...]

If I were Craig Newmark — the “Craig” in that little site known as CraigsList — I’d be looking over my shoulder with my eye on Seattle. There lies the corporate home of Zillow, where they just rolled out the latest addition to the second most visited real estate web site on the planet (after [...]

Realtor.org released a new home page design this morning. And unless you are a fan of circa 1990 web design, the change is long overdue. Here is what it looked like yesterday: Here’s what it looks like today: Thoughts on the redesign My initial thought was, “What’s up with the still ugly left side navigation?” [...]

[Author’s note: This article was originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. Drew and I both thought it might be good for Geek Estate Blog readers as well. It’s been modified ever-so-slightly from the original] Back in May 2008, I tried out the Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) commenting system on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. That test [...]

Point2 Agent, one of the leading suppliers of templated real estate web sites, has announced a change in their pricing model. Effective March 9, 2009, Point2’s “Standard” level of web site will be moving to a paid pricing model. All previously established and new Standard level sites will cost $9.95/month (or $99.95 annually if paid [...]

VendAsta Technologies just announced they have secured $3M in venture capital for MyFrontSteps.com. What is MyFrontSteps? From the press release (PDF file): MyFrontSteps connects people over social networks allowing them to share their home and home experiences with friends, family and the world – from their front steps in. Allowing everyone to leverage the collective [...]

Cuil.com, a new search engine, was released to much fanfare earlier this week. Pronounced “Cool”, my initial findings were, well…. not so cool. Cuil was founded by two former Google engineers (and another from IBM). Obviously these are very smart folks. According to Cuil, their claim to fame is: “Cuil searches more pages on the [...]

ActiveRain (AR), a large network of real estate professionals just announced they have launched “Outside Blogs”. Here is the initial announcement from Brad Andersohn, Active Rain Community Builder and GeekEstateBlog contributor. What is an Active Rain Outside Blog (AROB)? That’s ARspeak for a blog that lies outside the confines of the ActiveRain domain. Sort of. [...]

I recently ran across an excellent online real estate marketing guide, written by the folks at MortgageCalculator.org. Topics covered include: Domain NamesKeyword ResearchPay Per Click Search Engine MarketingWeb AnalyticsOn Page OptimizationLink BuildingContent SyndicationBlogging The guide is well written, in easy to understand non-geek speak. Deeply linked, it offers something for everyone from the new-to-online marketing [...]

Sawbuck Realty announced today that their site visitors have viewed over 1,000,000 listings since the site went live — on January 30th. That’s a pretty serious ramp-up in traffic — evidence to me that consumers out there like, want and need an easy-to-use online home search system. Sawbuck has an interesting business model, and a wicked [...]

Looking for a cool web site analytics package? Look no further than Woopra. Currently in “live beta”, you’ll need to go to the site and request an account. And be prepared to wait — the waiting list is long. It took me about a month to get my account activated. What can Woopra do?  From their [...]