Real estate agents may face big shakeout

Google Search: search marketing sacramento: "Riding the wave: Real estate agents may face big shakeout
Sacramento Bee, USA - Oct 20, 2005
... re beginning to ramp up their marketing, hold more ... from a small classroom to the Sacramento Convention Center. ... Her search for that first transaction has been ... "

Bonfire Alert: Uh-Oh....Lucy - Google Classifieds Coming Soon?

Uh, Oh....Lucy - Google Classifieds Coming to a Local Newspaper Market Soon?

So, if you are a newspaper “new media” person you are feeling a bit anxious today.

The lion-share of any newspaper new media revenue is classified move-over money from the printed product. I don't care how you spin it, it is. (Just ask any print classified Ad manager. Ask them about how they feel when the new media ad manager gets a big pay day just because her MBO is based on revenue that is coming her way not because she's particularly bright, but because she happened to be standing in the right place in the road when the migration from print classified ads started flowing in her direction.)

Now, it appears, the flow may start moving in a new direction entirely.

If Google really does get into the game of local, online classifieds, game over for newspaper web sites as profitable enterprise.

Why? Well, look at something like cars.com for example. This is an Internet "pure-play" owned in big part by newspaper companies. (I love the irony there)

Newspapers sell this solution to local car dealers. This is where ALL the newspaper's local auto classified ads are posted online. This creates a, keyword searchable marketplace for auto dealers to draw leads from their local markets.

Here's the rub...most of those leads are generated through search engine traffic. Search engines exactly like Google.

Yahoo! partnered with AutoTrader.com a while back. A nice fit it appears. One has the traffic, the other the relationships with the dealers. Nice.

However, with Google it appears unlikely a partnership with one vendor or even all vendors is likely to happen. Google just does not need a partner.

Why? If they really do have up to 60% of all searches (and most seem to agree they do) and it is obvious they need no one's help with the technology of key word search, the only think missing is dealer relationships.

Auto Dealers will go where the eyeballs are.

Ask most dealers and they will tell you they really despise the stranglehold they perceive the newspapers to have on them. Kind of a “sleeping with the enemy” relationship. (Again, ironic. Most newspapers are scared to death they are losing the dealers. Not to mention new home builders, real estate and the already lost employment category which is never coming back...) They will tell you newspaper companies charge them more every year for less. Less distribution. Less readership. Less return on those Ad dollars.

If a dealer or an employer or real estate broker or new home builder, can be shown that Google is a replacement for their newspaper Ad buys, they will flip faster than you can say “O% down on approved credit.”
This is going to me amazing...if it is happening. I guess We'll see.

Build your own search engine

This is just really cool. Rollyo.com let me build my own search engine. God bless them!

You can't get much more self absorbed than this! YOU define the universe YOU care about and then every search you perorm searches only those sites! If you find yourself searching for local goods and services often, why trudge through 22 million Google results for "Shopping in Sacramento" say? Simply select your top 25 most trusted, local sites and build your own search engine that will look only there. Very interesting. Local Internet Marketing has never been so personal!

Final Word(tracker)

In my final email conversation with the Andy Mindel, I told him I found their highly negative opinion on Overture's keyword database to be in conflict with their willingness to then offer the use of the same data as a part of their paid service. This is what I he said...

"Although we don't fully believe in the Overture data, many of our users still like to use this information to compare sources. We saw no reason not to add this to our system and allow people to utilize the source. In the future as different sources are made available we might also include these. However we will always keep the different databases separate from each other so people can make their own mind up. We have posted a full article of the differences between the data here: http://www.wordtracker.com/articles/overture.html - Andy Mindel."

Andy tells me the article has been there since April 2004.

Wordtracker Update

New Headline: Overly worked search-engine-slave sees smoking gun when what really was there was more of a foggy-brand-strategy.

This morning I was contacted, via email, by both Mike and Andy Mindel. Mke is Managing Director at Wordtracker - Andy's title is not indicated in his sig file.

As I stated in my original post, I was hoping I was wrong. To some degree I was.

In the drop down menu for the "keyword universe" section of the site, there is the option to search Overture instead of the Wordtracker Metacrawler partners. Although, I did not choose this option, and had never used this before, it appears the search defaulted to this. OK. I accept that. Weird ghost in the machine stuff happens to all of us.

The only thing that continues to bug me about this is how badly Wordtracker bags on Overture results as being "overly inflated" and stating "This is why we will always use metacrawlers as the results will never be distorted in this way".

Yet, Mike wrote to me the following...

"Our clients find that collecting keywords via Overture using the Wordtracker interface is a great timesaver. They often like to compare the numbers between Overture and Wordtracker as this gives them a better guide. In fact it's been this way for 7 years since we started in 1998".

Final Note: If Overture data are really this terrible, it seems an odd strategy to offer access to it on your platform. At the very least, offering it appears as a passive endorsement in direct conflict with your formal position statements.

Thanks for the response.

Wordjacker Part Deux

So, I contact support to make sure that I am not just being stupid. I ask about possible duplication between their results and Overture. This is the canned response I get...

"The numbers at Overture have been extremely over-inflated by the number of different partners that they have.

We have many keyword positions where the figures just don't match up at all. "Keywords" is a great example. If we were to look at Overture's stats, we should be receiving 600-1200 a day. We receive about 70-120 per day.

Our conclusion is not only is the suggestion tool skewed by ranking software checking the positions within the engine, eg. WebPosition and hardcoded queries in places such as epilot, but also all the bid optimizers have appeared recently.

They consistently check rankings inside the pay-per-click engines, artificially inflating the values and skewing the results. There are over 15 bid checkers now. You can imagine what these are doing to the results.

This is why we will always use metacrawlers as the results will never be distorted in this way". Link

Holy keyword caper jackman!

Local Search Engine Marketing, Eyeballfarm.com

Wordtracker or WordJacker? Scam? You decide.

So tonight I am running some keyword and phrase analysis for a client. I tap some of the usual starting points, Overture Key Word Selector Tool and Wordtracker.

Wordtracker is a paid service that makes the following promise...

"Wordtracker uses its database of over 300 million searches from MetaCrawler.com and DogPile.com over the last 130 days to find the popularity of the term you picked.

Overture makes their tool available for free.

Sooooo... something is really weird. BECUZ...When doing research on "Photoshop" and "Digital Photography" on the Overture tool, I get a list and search totals that look really similar to the same results Wordtracker gave me.

No wait, I mean the identical results down to the exact same words in the exact same order and the exact same total.

We are paying Wordtracker because it claims the following...

“Wordtracker uses its database of over 300 million searches from MetaCrawler.com and DogPile.com over the last 130 days to find the popularity of the term you picked.
E.g. Our database currently holds 344,643,274 words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times in (this is over 130 days). Our keywords are taken from major metacrawlers (a service that queries all the main search engines simultaneously).
Our database currently holds 344,643,274 words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times in (this is over 130 days).Our keywords are taken from major metacrawlers (a service that queries all the main search engines simultaneously)."

Well, apparently not.

It looks as if Wordjacker is just snatching the free Oveture tool results, laying there own skin on it and selling the results that are available elsewhere free.

I must be wrong on this. I am sure that I am just missing something. Please tell me what it is, 'cause I am wanting a refund right about now.

Local Search Engine Marketing - Eyballfarm.com