I have been beta testing the plugin for a few weeks and found it works well.

There is a $240 per year annual fee for the key to activate the plugin.

To qualify to use the plugin, you must:

1. Be a member of an MLS using flexmls Web;
2. Be authorized by your MLS for IDX; and
3. Be a subscriber of flexmls IDX 2.0.

Meet those criteria, and you’d be well advise to at least investigate the plugin and see what it can do.

Personally, I think just having an automated way to generate and display market stats justifies the cost. (Here is a small example of a market stats page.)

Add in various flavors of  listing slide shows by city, subdivision, etc, and this plug in has great potential.

Flexmls has a site dedicated to the plugin with more examples, documentation and how to get a key to unlock all the riches the plug in offers.

And they recently announced a new product, “Predesigned Websites that Work“.

To sweeten the pot they are having a drawing for a FREE setup of a “WtW” (I just made that “WtW” up) — saving you, assuming you win, $699…

Both Drew Meyers and Jim Marks are currently at Inman Connect in New York City. If you’re there, just find them and hand them a card. They won’t be hard to find.

Are you like me and didn’t make it to ICNY this year? No problem, they’ve got that covered too. Just go to the post about how you can enter from anywhere and you too can save $699 on what promises to be a killer website.

Current beta clients of Virtual Results are eligible to win too. Check the post for details.

I know Jim and Drew personally. And trust me, they know their stuff…

Today they announced that the index has gone global, and is now called the Global Real Estate Index — complete with it’s own dedicated site.

The index site allows you to drag and drop (and remove) the various categories to suit your individual needs and preferences. Why would you want to remove a category?

Maybe you don’t care about something. That sounds harsh, but take for example the Android Apps. I have an iPhone — so I don’t care about Android apps. I’m a residential broker, I don’t care (much) about commercial real estate. If you don’t have a WordPress blog (gasp!) maybe you don’t care about WordPress plugins. You get the idea. Being able to rearrange and delete categories makes the index more effective for YOU.

Providers that are interested in joining the index can submit a request on the index site. 1000watt vets each applicant, this isn’t just a link farm.

If you haven’t checked out the index, head on over. There’s a great collection of companies there, and the list morphs and moves as things change.

Earlier this week, the plugin came out of beta testing and has been released for general availability.

Here is part of the Diverse Solutions press release (full release):

Diverse Solutions announced today that they have released a new IDX product called dsIDXpress. The product allows agents and brokers using WordPress to get property listings on their own website and own domain to be indexed by the major search engines. dsIDXpress is different than traditional IDX solutions in that it has both the standard consumer search capabilities as well as the ability to insert specific listings or groups of listings into any page or blog post with their Live Listings(sm) shortcodes. The plugin also automatically builds in search-engine-friendly city, community, and zip code pages that show available properties in the respective areas. Furthermore, listing detail pages are available for every property in the MLS. Overall, dsIDXpress is being touted as a low cost alternative to functionality that was previously only available in high- end custom websites.

Diverse also has a web site dedicated to the plugin — dsidxpress.com

Pricing is currently set at $99.95 for set up and $29.95/month per domain (some MLS’s may have additional fees).

Since installing the various beta versions of the plugin (and still not using it anywhere close to its fullest capability), I am continuing to see heavy indexing of plugin generated pages.

As you can see in the Google Analytics chart below for Phoenix Real Estate Guy (TPREG), there has been a distinct increase in traffic since installing the plugin:

The plugin was installed on Dec 18 and on Dec 26 I added several sidebar links that generate IDX pages as well as a zip code “directory”. Shortly after that, a noticeable increase in traffic occurred. The traffic bump the week prior to Jan 1 is partly due to a post about local New Year’s Eve events, but there is no question that people are Googling addresses, MLS numbers and “longtail” search terms and landing on the site. Here is a real-time shot of some Sitemeter stats showing where currently on-line visitors landed:

Red arrows indicate visitors landing on dsIDXPress generated pages

This particular mix of visitors landing on normal blog pages and dsIDXPress generated pages holds true pretty much every time I take a peek at the real-time visits.

Of note, these results may not fold true for every user. I’m not an SEO expert, but I do know that TPREG enjoys a fair amount of “Google juice” and authority. I was also the first user of the plugin in Phoenix, so there may be a “first adopter” advantage. There is a legitimate question the release of this plugin poses — what will happen when multiple people in the same market are using it? (See a good discussion of this on Jeff Corbet’s xBroker blog, and the Diverse Solutions blog).

Personally, I feel the real power of this plugin is NOT in getting every listing in your MLS indexed (that won’t happen anyway. I doubt there is a single real estate web site out there with the “juice” or authority for that to happen). The real power comes with building content around indexed IDX pages. I’m in love with the idea of writing a blog post about a particular neighborhood, or type of property, and “embedding” indexable listings into the post. This way, when a user comes by 6 months (or 6 years) after the post is published, they will be presented with live listings at the time of their visit, not from the time the post was written.

That is freaking cool. . .

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 pages of listings. This can be done via widgets for your  listings,  cities you work in, zip codes, communities, and even specific IDX links you create in the backend of the Diverse Solutions SearchAgent Pro IDX solution. The plugin also has short code support that makes it easy to integrate listings into a blog post or page.

This is powerful stuff people.

Live Examples of dsIDXpress in Action

You can see examples of the listing, city and neighborhood widgets in the footer of TPREG (The Phoenix Real Estate Guy).

Here is an example of what you can do with zip code searches (the page is ugly — that’s my fault, not the plugins).

This post uses the plugin short code to display the five most recent new listings for Scottsdale, AZ.

An individual listing looks like this.

So, does it work?

Unlike most IDX listing output in web/blog pages, none of what the plugin generates is framed. Search engines have difficulty seeing inside frames, so if you want IDX listing information to be seen and indexed by search engines, you’ve got to get them outside of frames and into something the Google’s of the world can “see”.

And this plugin does exactly that.

Here’s a snapshot of the Google crawl stats from my blog:

Click image for larger view

Notice that large spike in the first and second charts? That’s the number of pages crawled and amount downloaded by Google since I installed the plugin. In other words, since installation, Google as found many more pages on my site. And SEO 101 tells us Google likes sites with lots of pages.

Actual Search Results from dsIDXpress

Within a couple of days of installing the “property list” widget (the map in bottom left of the footer on TPREG), every single one of our listings ranked #1 on Google for a search on the address. If you think people don’t go to Google and search addresses, think again. In the last 3 days, there have been 23 searches for our listing addresses that wound up landing on TPREG. That’s not a ton of traffic, but patience Grasshopper, it’s only been 3 days.

Yesterday, I added several community searches in the widget in the bottom right of TPREG’s footer. Today, several of those community pages rank #1 on Google for the search term “community name Real Estate” (ie: Ray Ranch real estate, Lyons Gate real estate, etc) . This includes communities I have never previously targeted on the blog. And they are ranking ahead of other little real estate sites like Trulia.com, Homes.com, Realtor.com, Point2 Agent and more. And yes, people have already visited via those terms. These “long tail” terms are golden. Someone that Google’s “Lyons Gate real estate” probably falls into one of two categories — someone who knows about Lyons Gate and is considering buying there, or someone that lives in Lyons Gate and is considering selling. I like it when those types of people land on the blog, and simply adding “Lyons Gate” to a widget, which dumps new listings for that area into a blog page, and having it updated multiple times a day is. . .

. . . powerful stuff people.

Think of the possibilities, and the coolness…

Write a blog post about a community, or a zip code, or a certain kind of home (think “Phoenix homes between $300 – $350K”). Put a tiny piece of short code at the bottom of the post, and this plugin will automagically add in current listings. Current as in someone pulls that post up a year from now and they see new listings based on the time they view the post, not when the post was published.

This is powerful stuff people.

I’m not remotely close to being an “SEO expert”, so I can’t say if the search results I’ve seen would be easily duplicated. TPREG enjoys a fair amount of love from Google and is crawled frequently and deeply. I’m sure this helps. But I believe implementation of this plugin on any blog would prove very beneficial. Listings tend to be “keyword rich”, and I know for a fact that people use search terms including community names, addresses and MLS numbers. Having those items indexable, and new content constantly brought onto your site (automatically!) has to be a great thing for any blog on any level.

Check the post on the DS blog for more details and info. Again, the plugin is in beta, but I suspect it will be released pretty quickly. You’ll have to be a DS SearchAgent Pro user to utilize it, and there will be a price to pay (price point hasn’t been released yet). But ya gotta believe this is powerful stuff people!

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 PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com Realtor.com).

Zillow has entered the rentalz market. (Sorry, “rentalz” makes better use of the “Z” than zentals.)

Yessir, now in addition to seeing homes for sale, recent sales, and the goofy Make Me Move “listings” you’ll soon see little purple house icons reflecting homes available for rent.

Compare that slick, polished and useful search interface to a sample from the aforementioned CraigsList and you’ll see why I think Craig should be a little concerned.

CraigsList is cool in a Web 0.5, 1980′s kind of way. But have you ever tried to really find anything there? As Jim Duncan  points out, CL gets a ton of traffic, but the user interface is beyond annoying.

So other than a spiffy (and usable) search, what is Zillow bringing to the table with this entry into the rental dance?

• A landlord, property manager or rental listing agent can get their rental listed on Zillow for $9.95 for 180 days (if you are a landlord and you need more than six months to lease a home, you might want to consider another investing strategy. I recommend savings bonds).

• Rental listings will be “featured” — displayed at the top of the page. Zillow officials claim featured listings get six times the exposure of non-featured listings. A thought just came across my mind though (it happens). If all rental listings are featured, then what difference does it make? Best I can tell, there is no way to have an non-featured rental listing. Unless home search and rental search results are co-mingled…

• Speaking of co-mingling, Zillow mentioned on a call yesterday that something like 25% of potential home buyers are also considering renting. Zillows new search allows people to search both rentals and for sale listings and allows search by monthly payment. This appears to be a unique twist in the home search space (that others are sure to join in on).

Here’s my beef with searching by monthly payment. Currently the behind the scenes math calculates a monthly payment based on a 30-year fixed rate loan with 20% down. Rates are pulled from Zillow’s mortgage side. But we all know rates can vary based on multiple factors. And down payment amount vary wildly. Toss in things like HOA fees, PAD fees, and Who Knows What fees and I’m thinking the “search by monthly payment” feature could provide some false results, if not false hope.

“But Zillow said my monthly payment would be $X if I bought this house,” may join the chorus of, “Are you effing kidding me? The Zestimate says my home is worth WAY more than you say it is!”

And speaking of Zestimates, this bodes the question, will Zillow try to Zestify (term (C) Kris Berg) rentals? It wasn’t discussed on the conference call I attended, as I wasn’t as smart as Kris and Jim and failed to ask. But apparently on an earlier call the question was posed and David Gibbons, Zillow’s Director of Community Relations, said that rental Zestimates will not be a part of the launch.

Not. Part. Of. The. Launch. That could be extrapolated into, “maybe we’ll do that when we collect enough data”. Who knows.

In other news, Zillow is also removing the free listings option for manually entered home listings. All listings not provided via syndication or a feed will incur a charge of $9.95 for a six month listing. Of note though is these listings will all be featured, and should enjoy increased exposure over the “old” free listing. Given the multitude of syndication options out there (via which you can still get your listings to Zillow for free), it’s hard to see how anyone could complain about this. But I assure you they will.

There’s more, but this is the gist of it. Kris Berg has her usual brilliant take, and Jim Duncan has a nice compilation of other posts as well. I’m sure there are more floating about the RE blogiverse.

Disclosure for the Blog Police: Zillow.com has some function in hosting/managing this very blog you are reading. But I have received absolutely zero compensation of any form for opining here. Heck, I didn’t even get invited to their party at the NAR Conference in San Diego. And no Sara, I’m never letting that go.

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?” Todd Carpenter, the NAR’s Social Media Manger, told me that since this is not a site redesign, only a refresh of the home page, the menu is necessary for navigation deeper into the site. Makes sense.

Todd also pointed out these highlights:

• A wider design that allows more content to be placed above the fold.
• A more prominent Search. The improvements to the search function are ongoing.
• Hot topic quick links just below the search for the most often viewed pages.
• An “In case you missed it” near the footer that allows visitors to see more timely content surfaced on the home page.

While the home page is still very busy, it is far easier to see important information. There is a TON of material on realtor.org, so any design is likely to be “busy”.  Visually the design is much more appealing (though really, anything would have been an improvement). I like the easy access to various RSS feeds, and the boxes for “Membership Benefits”, “Community Programs”, and “Professional Development” that can be opened right on the home page help keep even more content within easy reach.

I do think the large spot with the realtor.com add could be put to far better use. That same add is already in the header and to be blunt, I don’t really need the NAR to pimp r.com’s services to me. Yes, my intense dislike for r.com biases my opinion on this aspect of the design. (Update: on a page refresh, an HP add replaced the r.com ad. Still, that space could be put to better use IMO).

Overall, I think it’s a vast improvement.

The NAR wants to hear your thoughts. They have a short survey (12 questions) and you can leave comments here on GEB as well. I assure you, someone from NAR will be reading them.

Back in May 2008, I tried out the Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) commenting system on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. That test failed for several reasons, primarily I didn’t like the fact that comments were stored only on the Disqus servers. I was concerned what would happen to the 13,000+ comments on the blog should I wake up one day and Disqus was gone. Another show stopper for me was for someone to subscribe to comments, they were forced to join Disqus (which is free, but still).

A lot has changed with Disqus in the past 14 months, so I’ve decided to try it again.

• Comments are now “synched” with and retained in my WordPress SQL database. They are served from Disqus, but I can turn it off with a keystroke and revert instantly to the standard WordPress commenting system.
• The ability to subscribe to comments without having to join Disqus has been added. (and comment subscription is “double opt in” – you’ll get an email asking you to confirm your subscription. This prevent losers from subscribing you to stuff you don’t want. Trust me, it happens.)
• Disqus comments are “SEO Friendly” – the content still shows as part of the page in TPREG’s HTML. It is also friendly to those who have javascript disabled.

How to Comment with Disqus

It’s really no different than it used to be, though you have many more options.

Here’s what the comment area looks like:

If you so desire (it’s completely your choice) you can log in via Disqus, Facebook, Twitter or OpenId. Using these services has benefits – it will pull in your avatar so we can see your smiling face and you can post your comment to your Facebook profile, Tweet it, etc. This also helps with “community building” and exposure. It’s the web 2.0 way.

If you prefer, just as in the past, you can enter your name, email and website (optional) and leave a comment that way.

With a webcam and a Seesmic account, you can leave a video comment.

Cool Disqus Features

There are some pretty nifty features available with this system. Those that chose to get a free Disqus account will have links to their various social network profiles available to all readers:

All the comments you leave on Disqus enabled blogs (and there are a LOT of them) are saved to your Disqus profile. Ever left a masterpiece comment on a blog and forgot where it was? Or worse yet, the blog goes offline into the ether? No more worries, your comments are yours to keep, savor and share.

Click on the “Expand” link and a shadow box pops up with the commenters most recent comments across Disqus enabled blogs.

Here is tdhurst’s full Disqus profile. It’s basically a collection of Tyler’s musings across the internet. Kinda cool.

Login with your Twitter ID, and you can send your comment as a Tweet.

So what?

In theory, this helps you “build your Twitter presence” and followers. It could also (selfishly) drive traffic back to the blog you’re tweeting from (the link in the Tweet points to your blog comment). If nothing else, it allows you to send a charming and witty comment to Twitter with the check of a box.

But wait, there’s more!

An oft requested feature that I’ve never been able to figure out how to do is provide the ability for a reader to subscribe to comments without having to leave a comment. Now you can do that. You can also subscribe to comments on specific posts via RSS. You can tag comments you “like” and even report them to the blog author (useful for helping your friendly blogger kill any spam that slips through). You can even change the sort order of comments.

Heck, you can even reply to comments through email or text messaging, and edit your comments any time you like.

Disqus from the Bloggers Perspective

Here’s a list of benefits for bloggers from the Disqus About page:

• Threaded comments and comment ratings
• Powerful moderation and admin tools
• Filter out spam, trolls, and unwanted commenters
• Enable your visitors to become a real community
• Moderation by email or mobile
• More comments and increased engagement
• Connected with a large discussion community
• Increased exposure and readership

Spam control looks to be very good. Several systems are used, including Aksimet (which most WordPress bloggers use). The comment admin interface is powerful, yet intuitive. And I love being able to administer comments via email!

One of the nice things about implementing this is the heavy coding is done by the experts at Disqus. Ever tried to get Facebook Connect implemented on a blog? It’ll drive you to empty a fifth of Jack Daniels. Now the real programmers do it and I just upgrade a plugin when they add new features.

The Drawbacks of Disqus

Learning to type “Disqus” instead of “Discuss” is hard.

Disqus comments are “nofollowed”. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. I did have comments “dofollowed” and the amount of spam I had to deal with increased significantly. It was becoming a huge time-sink to manage comments. In order to “share the Google love” with commenters, I’ll probably be installing a dofollow comment widget of some sort on TPREG. I just need to find the right one.

Plugins that enhance/modify the comments in a blog will likely not function in Disqus. On my blog, the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins were rendered useless.  These pulled in the commenters last blog post (most of the time) and allowed “hot linked” keywords in the commenters name field. Both also seemed to attract spammers by the boatload and didn’t really increase the frequency of quality comments.

For those that leave comments solely for the link love, sorry. But honestly, that’s a pretty lame reason to leave comments anywhere. Comments do help drive traffic to you and give you exposure, regardless of whether they are followed or not by search engines. Leave comments on blogs to engage with and enrich the community, and yourself, not just for a link that has marginal worth.

Installing Disqus

If you’re a blogger and you want to use (or try) Disqus, it’s pretty simple. Plugins and instructions are available for many blog platforms including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Movable Type, Square Space, Drupal, Joomla and more.

Give it a Test Drive

If you want to see the Disqus comment system in action, you can stop by TPREG, Sellsius, Tribus Real Estate, the Roost blog, or even some of the blogiverse heavyweights like Mashable.

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 in advance).

In a message and FAQ posted on the Point2 Agent site, CEO Saul Klein had this to say about moving from a free to a pay model:

. . . the time has arrived to take the hard step of asking all of our members who receive a value from our products and services to share in the costs, a move that will allow us to offer even more value.

And

Charging a nominal amount for all Point2 Agent Standard accounts will help Point2 to constantly improve its services, to continue to build new features, and to devise new ways to help members succeed in their markets and generate new business. Additionally, this adjustment will help to ensure that all members are enjoying an equal and fair level of service for their dollar rather than having some members pay to access the same services others are receiving for free.

Prices for Point2’s other levels of membership, Professional and Premium, are not affected by this change. The new pricing for the Standard level includes a free 3 month trial period before the monthly pricing kicks in as well as four free “Spotlight ads” on Point2’s home search site (a $100 value).

Personally, I think this is a good move on the part of Point2. There are countless abandoned Standard level sites out there, and this will clean those up. Additionally, as Klein discusses, it will allow P2 to focus on innovation and improvements.

It would be unrealistic to expect all existing Standard level members to pony up the money, so Point2’s membership count will most certainly drop. But it will now be an accurate count. I’ve always struggled with the membership numbers they report. If you ask me, counting a site as a “member” that hasn’t been touched since the day it went on-line 4 years ago was never appropriate.

I’m sure that some members who have been enjoying a completely free web site will not be pleased with this move. In fact, this morning someone running a free Standard P2 site left a comment on an ActiveRain post I made about Point2 over two years ago. The comment was, “Well… all good things got to come to an end… and so with P2”.

Point2 isn’t coming to an end. In fact, this could be a “rebirth”. I’ve been a little disappointed lately with Point2’s pace of innovation. Moving to a pay pricing model for all levels may help with this.

And let’s face it. If a real estate agent has to have a free web site and can’t afford to pay $10/month for an Internet presence, they might want to take a serious look at their own business model.

Disclosure: I am a Point2 Premium Member and Authorized Point2 Agent Distributor.

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 experiences of their social graph – people they know and trust – to find inspiration and local service providers to improve home and lifestyle.

Consumers are beginning their search for services online. Many of the best service providers operate via referral and have no real online presence. MyFrontSteps allows people to open their “black book” of great service providers and share their experience with friends, family or anyone, via the social network of their choice.

MyFrontSteps’ first product, StepRep, will allow home service professionals to monitor, manage and build their online identity and reputation. MyFrontSteps will help consumers find, select and utilize home service providers and gain insight and knowledge about them from people they know and trust.

VendAsta was founded by several executives formerly with Point2 Agent — a leading real estate web site provider and search portal.

Inside sources confirm they are quite busy and are actively expanding their development/consulting workforce.