Suburb View
We are happy to welcome our newest Privatepoint partner Suburb View. Suburb View is the first real estate search engine operating in Australia. What is a real estate search engine? Basically, it is like a Google search engine which crawls existing real estate agent websites and real estate portals looking for real estate listings. When it finds real estate listings it extracts a photo, the property details and the first line of the property description and places it on the Suburb View website.
This is great for the real estate industry as it no longer requires real estate agents to set up data feeds of their property listings to be send to 3rd party websites. This means that more and more real estate search engine websites will appear improving search functionality and user experience for people searching for real estate.
These real estate search engine websites need to obtain the permission of the websites they are crawling meaning it is perfect for private sellers and real estate agents because they pay nothing to have their listings on these websites. This is great as it means more and more internet exposure for your property listing and a greater audience of potential buyers.
Another great feature of real estate search engine websites is that they provide a link back to the website responsible for providing the property listing. Users can read the remainder of the description by selecting the link and be directed to the specific real estate agent or property owner, making it easy for the user to make that next call of action.
Its great to see websites like Suburb View come into the market and over the next six months I believe a few big international players including Dothomes, Propsmart, Hotpads and Propbot will all allow their crawlers to gather Australian real estate listings to be displayed on their websites. Lets hope this happens sooner rather than later!
Comments
I have used this site before it is good.
Mark
16.07.08
10:40 am
Yeah I checked this website out. Not that great, the layout is somewhat confusing and it is a little slow. The overall idea of the website a “search engine” sounds really awesome.
T-Bone
17.07.08
3:29 pm
So websites like this work similar to Google do they? This website is taking the listings from Domain, Homehound and a lot of the major real estate agencies. Why don’t Google do the same thing?
I think it is a great website to use, it has all the information centered in one location. I do have a soft spot for searching for property via a map so this website suits me to a tee.
I guess we disagree on something again T-Bone! Haha
Micky
18.07.08
9:02 am
They do work similar to Google, they trawl websites looking for property listings. The search engine (or crawler) isn’t as powerful as what the Google search engine is and needs to be pointed at specific websites. So Suburb View would point their crawler at these real estate sites and it would get what information the crawler wants. The best thing about this type of technology is that once you have the permission from the real estate agent or real estate website it easy to take their information. It is free exposure for other websites and agents so the majority should agree.
Bob Sacamento
18.07.08
1:26 pm
Google.Base has just officially launched in Australia so I think they would automatically be searching for properties on all the real estate agent websites. It will be interesting to see what affect this will have on the leading websites http://www.realestate.com.au and http://www.domain.com.au.
I’d imagine users will switch to use Google.Base because most of them are already using Google for their search engine and web browser homepage.
Mark
20.07.08
2:03 pm
Further to Bob’s comments above. Google base is a directory of products for sale/lease. Your listing won’t just appear there you need to submit your item to Google.
Similar to when a new website is created you submit the website to Google so it gets picked up in the search engine. Think of every new item as a new website and once it is submitted to Google it will be picked up in the Google search engine.
Websites like Privatepoint would submit all their properties (items) to Google.
Rhino
20.07.08
2:45 pm
I think the effectiveness of Google is going to be somewhat limited.
In discussions I’ve had with real estate agents they have indicated they are looking forward to the release of Google. The reason is, becasue Google will be free and should generate a large audience and therefore results for agents. If Google delivers results then agents might be able to substitute their expensive subscriptions with http://www.realestate.com.au and http://www.domain.com.au (as Mark pointed out above) with Google.
Well, my thoughts are different. Although Google will no doubt have a large variety of property listings, they do not hold the full data for the listing. Users can see the full data by clicking on the listing and being referred to the agents website. I don’t think this will be popular with users as websites like http://www.realestate.com.au and http://www.domain.com.au users have all the information available and users like this method of searching fro data. For this reason i can’t see Google achieving the results for agents and property sellers that these current real estate websites do.
Here is a link to http://base.google.com/
Rodney Munch
21.07.08
9:16 am
Users want two things from a real estate website. A large variety of listings and an easy system to sort those listings. Google will provide both of those things.
Currently, I think some of the larger real estate website fail with the 2nd point, sorting data in these websites is hard because there is so much advertising. At the moment Google has no advertising in their classifieds section.
I disagree with your argument about users preferring full data sites. That is simply extra information they need to sort through which they probably don’t want. Let the user decide whether they want to go to another website to see more information, don’t just assume they want it and provide it for them.
Mark
22.07.08
10:52 pm
If you look at any real estate portals you will see that search results are displayed with a thumbnail photo and the address details, features and summary of the property. If the user wants further information then they click on the listing and they are taken to the property page. Isn’t this given the user the choice to move on or view information about the property?
The point in the previous comment was that users of a website like having the same property page layout for every property they choose to view more information for. It just makes it easier to compare properties.
Let’s do an example look at http://www.dothomes.com and select two properties to view further information (make sure they are from different agents). Notice that the layout and information for each property is different.
Now go to http://www.househunter.com.au and select two properties two view further information. Notice the layout and type of information provided is the same.
Personally, I think users prefer to have uniform data and use real estate portals.
Rodney Munch
23.07.08
8:51 am
I guess the proof will be in the pudding, let’s wait and see whether the big boys lose any market share.
Mark
24.07.08
6:12 am