I’m a small Real Estate Agent. How do I get my listings on Google’s new Property Finder?

So you’ve probably all heard that Google’s moving into property listings, potentially trying to out-muscle realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.

Already this week they’ve also announced a new computer operating system to take on the might of Microsoft and Apple.

Be afraid. Pretty soon Google will be everywhere.

But let’s talk property and have a look under the hood of this new property listing system for real estate agents, buyers and renters.This is such a boon for those poor struggling, BMW driving real estate agents. They get to upload their property listings to Google for free! I wonder how much blood drained from the faces of executives at realestate.com.au and domain.com.au when this announcement came across their respective boardroom tables.

I can think of three options for them:

1. Fight Google like crazy with more marketing, promotion, shoring up and strengthen existing customer relationships with real estate agents, etc.
2. Discounting the listing fees
3. Run up the white flag and join Google by opening the listing feeds

Myhome has already joined in, as have (potentially) hundreds, if not thousands of small independent and franchised real estate agents.

And they must be loving it. Leverage is such a beautiful thing when there’s been an effective duopoly for a few years now.

Thankfully, listing your property is really easy and it appears as though you can upload your property for free, even if you’re not a real estate agent! It just gets better and better.

To get started, there’s a link at the bottom of this page: https://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/realestate/

Click the link and you’re taken to the information page about how to get your properties featured…

There’s lots of information about configuring your data-file feed, so that it specifies price, location, number of bedrooms, a photo etc, etc. It’s really just a matter of following all the required steps, one of which will include creating a Google Base account.

Once you’ve created a data-file, you’ll need to push it up through your Google Base account and you’re done. It sounds a little tricky, but it really is very logical and well worth the effort!

The only long-term risk to the uptake of Google Property listings is users getting frustrated with the amount of ‘sold’ properties on the maps.

The onus is on the person or organisation to remove sold or leased property listings, so the listings on Google Maps remain current. While researching today’s post, I’ve found quite a few listings already which have been sold. I think users will probably stop using Google Property if it’s not kept up-to-date, so if you’re in the real estate game, keep those feeds current!

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Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.

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