Google Enters Property Search Market

06-Oct-2009 The near-omnipresent Google has added a property-search component to its Google Maps website which could see the revenue streams for established real estate websites slow.

Based on a similar product that has been operating in the United States for about a year, Google Maps real estate allows real estate agents to list their properties free on the site.

This means that prospective purchasers can use the Google Maps site as a search tool for properties for sale in a particular area. The results show up on the mapping service and buyers can click through to the real estate agent's website for more details - bypassing the need to use more established sites such as domain.com.au (owned by Fairfax Media, the owner of BRW).

"It seems a natural addition to what we are already doing with maps," Google Australia spokeswoman Annie Baxter says. "Google Maps and street view have been a popular tool for real estate agents for a long time, and we're simply increasing the functions available to real estate agents and bringing more information to our searchers.?

This new facility has ruffled the feathers of players such as domain.com.au and realestate.com, as well as Melbourne's realestateview.com. Describing the move as "worrying", the chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria and managing director of realestateview.com, Enzo Raimondo, says the launch is a ploy to sink existing property-search websites.

Raimondo is concerned that Google is attempting to drive traffic away from real estate portals towards the Google Maps site, and that it could enable Google to drain revenue away from existing sites. "The danger is that real estate agents will jump on it because it's a free service for them," he says.

"This way, Google could achieve market dominance, then find a way to make agents pay for it. We all buy Adwords to advertise through Google, and now they expect us to provide our property databases free of charge as well."

Despite Google's pulling power with online traffic, Raimondo says the search company is ill-equipped to offer a real alternative to the existing portals because it lacks the depth of information provided by such websites.

"We will not be listing any of the properties from realestateview.com on the Google Maps site because we can provide a high level of service to the customer which they simply can't," Raimondo says.

"We will continue to buy Adwords but we are also looking into other search providers like Bing and Yahoo because we don't want to jeopardise our client base. Google should have stuck to search." The response from real estate agents has been less critical, with many pointing out that they rely on multiple sources of advertising and welcome any new service to drive traffic to their websites.

"We use every resource open to us, anywhere that's going to be productive and give us a way to the customer - Google, realestateview.com, domain.com.au, we list wherever we can," real estate agent with Melbourne agency Ranges First National, Rik Rushton, says.

"The reality is the real estate agents will go where the market is, and if it's Google who attracts that market, it doesn't really matter if they end up charging us to list a property on the site or not because we're already paying to list with the existing portals."

Real estate agent and director of Melbourne agency Hodges, Andrew Boyce, is concerned that the Google Maps search tool and its associated Street View function may not be as up to date as many real estate agents would like.

"You go to the portal which will give you the best coverage, and Google may have the customers, but then the image they see of the property on Street View is old, [so] you might not get the interest," Boyce says. "Google would need to keep Street View up to date, and they'll need some way to pay for that."

Having fully embraced a range of online Google software applications for his Professionals real estate agency in Bathurst in New South Wales, James Thompson is a fervent supporter of Google's decision to link real estate ads with its Maps service.

"It's a danger for the existing portals, but as real estate agents, we have been giving our data away for a long time, so for us it's nothing new," Thompson says. "It's just progress, technology is changing the way we do all our business, and if one lot of technology is better than another, people will change the way they operate."

Thursday, 01 October 2009 | Jeanne-Vida Douglas for BRW  www.brw.com.au
To read this article at its source visit http://brw.com.au/viewer.aspx?EDP://20091001000031608160

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