Loading ...
Many of the agents I talk to are focused on being found in Google. We all know that more searches are done on Google than the other search engines. And, depending on who you talk to and what you read, everyone has a different opinion about the prime search engine for real estate.
Our philosophy is that you need to track your progress on all the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, Lycos, AOL, and Ask.
Have you seen any of the TV ads for Ask? They’re running in my area, and they come across as a very viable alternative that offers some unique capabilities.
And, AOL is doing some interesting things with their real estate search. Take a look at this post on the Future of Real Estate Marketing site. Players like Zillow and Trulia will need to deal with some of the more established sites like AOL.
This article also reinforces the fact that advertising dollars are moving away from traditional print media and flowing to the Internet.
So, a word to the wise: The Internet landscape as it relates to real estate marketing is changing rapidly. Don’t get stuck in a rut that will put you behind the crowd as everyone (local newspapers included) runs after Internet market share and advertising dollars.
I get over 52% of my website visitors from Google, just over 14% from Yahoo, fewer than 1% from MSN and tiny bits and pieces from elsewhere. What is missing as this doesn’t add up to close to 100% is that around 14% type in a url or have the site bookmarked.
Sam,
I get most of my visitors who come from a search engine from Google, too. My stats for November came out 52% for Google (must be going around!), 19% Yahoo, 17% Windows Live, 4.5% Atomz, 3% MSN, and a few miscellaneous. These percentages don’t include people who came to the site directly.
Another thing to consider is that I rank best on Google. I wonder what our stats, and our traffic numbers, would look like if we ranked as well on the other search engines?
Kathleen