Category Archives: IDX

A positive byproduct of my quest to revamp my personal website is that I came in contact with some great companies that will be the innovators of tomorrow’s real estate tech industry.  One website designer and custom IDX provider that caught my eye in a big way was the Dislpet RETS/IDX  and their highly customizable solution that I came to study as a result of the comment thread in my brutally honest case study here on GEB. They are a relatively new company but it’s … Read More »

In any vertical, the goal of a business website is to help you make money. Real estate is no different, meaning your local real estate website needs to bring you clients in order to be worth the time and money it takes to operate it. In the real estate vertical, the vast majority (let’s just call it 80% conservatively) of your website conversions WILL occur as a result of buyers searching for properties on your website and registering for email alerts or updates — but you … Read More »

Real Estate Social “Notworking?” It was getting close to Inman Connect NY, and I could feel the urgency in a text message from Matt Beall, ”did you get my email regarding the social media case study for Inman?” I’m sure somewhere—in the ether that is my inbox—sat an email from Mr. Beall. Knee deep in a Hawaii Life interface redesign, however, my Gmail account was left unmanaged and overflowing its 200G limit. Since integrating social media into our real estate search in September 2011, I hadn’t really thought … Read More »

For a weeks I have been searching high and low, attending webinars and a two day marketing conference, scouring through forums, spending countless hours on the phone with vendors, and countless more Googling everything and anything I could think of to reinvent my site that targets San Diego real estate.  Finally it occurred to me that I have access here on Geek Estate Blog to the best and brightest minds, and that we could use my site (sandiegohomefinder.com) as a case study of what to … Read More »

+ Wow, the Zillow acquisition of Diverse Solutions for $7.8 million in cash and stock is big big news for this industry. I’ve got a unique perspective on this announcement for a few reasons: At Virtual Results, we work extremely closely with Diverse Solutions. Their dsIDXpress comes standard with every Predesigned Website that Works (dsSearchAgent is optional), and on most of our customs. I worked for Zillow for almost 5 years & worked with Diverse Solutions as an API partner starting back in 2007 (& 2008). I happen … Read More »

I’ve noticed an interesting trend developing; agents are adding MLS Widgets to their Facebook page. Some of the Apps being developed for Facebook are complete websites onto themselves that using clever scripting to shoehorn themselves into the Facebook Platform. Others offer sophisticated lead capture capabilities. One thing is for certain, IDX Vendors are beginning to provide Agents with a way to tap into Facebook’s 500 Million+ user base and providing home buyers with new tools to find homes inside their favorite Social Media platform. In … Read More »

My good friends over at Diverse Solutions released a brand new site design about a week ago (I’m been behind with this blog post). Having just recently gone through our own site redesign for Virtual Results, I know full well the amount of work that goes into redesigning your own corporate site — and a lot of that work is content. Their new site is full of a bunch of fantastic content about their 4 core products – dsSearchAgent, dsIDXpress, dsAgentReach, and dsSearchAgent Mobile (part … Read More »

In an announcement made on the Google Developers’ blog, they recently announced changes to their terms of use for the free map API that many IDX Vendors and Brokers are using. Google announced that they will begin delivering advertising inside map imagery. They will also begin limiting the number of times a free map can be displayed. This causes big potential headaches for IDX providers and Brokerages alike. First, many MLS’s don’t allow advertising to be displayed in or around their IDX data. Literally overnight, … Read More »

From the Syndication To Real Estate portals PDF paper from Clariety Consulting after showing examples of Trulia, Zillow, and Yahoo! promoting other agents over the listing agent on listing detail pages: Trulia, YAHOO!, Zillow and others would claim that their ad treatments are no different from the standard industry practices of “cooperation and compensation” and IDX display, where someone other than the listing broker works with a buyer and where competing brokers advertise the listing broker’s properties. However, as noted above, closer examination suggests that … Read More »

Speaking of mobile marketing (the topic of tonight’s #retechchat 90 minutes from now), I just got the following email from Diverse Solutions: Diverse Solutions is excited to announce our new mobile IDX solution!  Combining the search and lead capture features of our IDX products into a portable interface, dsSearchAgent Mobile is a fast and easy IDX you and your buyers will love. Developed for use on smart phones, our mobile IDX offers the search power and flexibility of a full IDX solution in a compact … Read More »