Here at Property Ad Guru, we have plenty of advice on how to make your website the best it can possibly be. There’s a lot you can do on your own, but for UK agents still looking for an out-of-the-box solution, UltraIT could be worth checking out.

UltraIT is a European company that has just set up shop in the UK. They offer website packages for agents working in both sales and rentals, along with an SEO service. While their service isn’t free – package prices start from £1395 – UltraIT promises extras such as its “Application Match” feature, which automatically matches listings to customer requirements, make it worth the investment.

Meanwhile, Australian property data supplier PriceFinder is about to launch “Share” – a service that allows agents to give their clients access to information from PriceFinder’s database for free.

PriceFinder says the information available through Share includes property price history, estimated sales price, a map searching tool, property photos, and the potential yield of a property within the current market or any time in recent history.

At this stage, Share is only available to PriceFinder’s “pro” subscribers, who pay AUD$255 per month.

Those interested in finding out more about Classified Ad Ventures – the online classifieds company founded by propertyadguru.com owner Simon Baker – can gain an insight from today’s article in The Australian.

In the article, Baker discusses everything from his time as CEO of realestate.com.au to the creation of nestoria.com.au, the state of online businesses in Australia, and what he has learned from early mistakes.

Over the past few months, it’s become clear that Google Maps isn’t just about directions. With the release of Place Pages, the Favourite Places program, and a set of tools aimed specifically at real estate agents, we now know Google Maps wants to become as important to businesses as it is to people figuring out how to get from A to B.

So it should come as no surprise that Google Maps is now giving businesses the option of adding their logo to their location, making it visible to users as they zoom in. Of course, Australian real estate agency chain and Google Maps partner LJ Hooker is on board.

But the scheme isn’t as straightforward as it might first appear. According to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald, this isn’t just a matter of a business paying to see their logo on Google Maps. Google must first determine if the business is “relevant” to Maps users, and the logo will only remain on Maps if enough people are clicking on it for more information.

“[J]ust because a particular business has paid for their location, it doesn’t mean it will necessarily show,” Google product manager Matt Leske told digital-media.net.au. “If a bank wants to put a logo on all its ATM locations, those inside a shopping centre won’t show because the shopping centre is more prominent on the Map. Though a brand will only be charged for the logos displayed.”

So far, the logos are only available in Australia and New Zealand, but digital-media.net.au reports there are plans to offer the option in other markets in future.

Since Google first began adding real estate listings to Google Maps in mid-2009, the world of online real estate has been monitoring the company’s every move. Each upgrade brought more speculation on how Google was planning to change things for property portals, real estate agents, and property hunters.

Now, we have a clearer idea of where Google is headed.

At a Sydney press conference today, Google revealed what it described as its “vision for working with the real estate industry”. That vision involves, among other things, a marketing partnership with one of Australia’s most well known real estate agencies: LJ Hooker.

This new marketing push will see physical representations of the Google Maps “pins” appearing across 16 Sydney locations, from shopping centres to cinemas and even on Bondi Beach. Google says the co-branded pins are meant to encourage more Australians to head online to begin their real estate search, but with 87 percent of the population already doing so according to Nielsen, it’s clear this is a push to get Australians thinking “Google” when they think of online real estate.

Karim Temsamani, general manager of Google Australia and New Zealand, said today that Google Maps now links over 1,000 real estate websites across Australia and New Zealand. Along with LJ Hooker, Google also includes Ray White, First National and Century 21 amongst these partners, as well as smaller portals such as homehound.com.au and myhome.com.au. As pleased as Google seems to be with these partnerships, one big question remains: what of Australia’s market leader, realestate.com.au, and the number two player domain.com.au?

When quizzed about the relationship with the two portals, Andrew Foster, product manager for real estate search on Google Maps, remained diplomatic. “We’re happy to take listings from anyone,” he said, while confirming that there is currently no arrangement to take listings from either portal. “At this stage they’re choosing not to provide listings,” he said.

“We’re not sitting back and waiting for large providers,” Foster continued, emphasising that Google’s coverage is “diverse and comprehensive”, and that there is “genuine enthusiasm to be seen on Google” from the real estate industry.

Foster’s demonstration of the full extent of real estate search on Google Maps showed some possible reasons for that enthusiasm. Beginning with a simple keyword search for real estate in a certain area, users can now choose to refine their results further by layering results from other Maps searches, ending with a map that shows not only listings but also nearby restaurants and cafes, schools, businesses, and estimated transit times from place to place.

Clicking on any of the pins on this map will takes users to a Place Page, where they can find even more detailed information about a property. Photos, inspection times, floor plans, and videos from YouTube can all be included, along with Google’s Street View, which is currently being updated for Australia and New Zealand.

The Place Page is also where Google addresses the issue of multiple sources for a listing. Under the property’s details, a list of the sources is provided, so users can choose to find more information from the agency’s website, or go to the relevant property portal to continue searching.

google.com.au/realestatetools is another part of the push towards real estate agents. This is where Google is aiming to “cut through the clutter” and present real estate agents with all the Google tools it thinks could be useful. Needless to say, Maps is included, as are AdWords and YouTube.

Today’s announcements were all focused on the Australian and New Zealand markets, and Foster said there was nothing to announce in terms of real estate search on UK Google Maps or elsewhere. But if this latest push manages to draw in Australian and New Zealand property hunters, we’re guessing it will only be a matter of time before Google Maps real estate search gains momentum overseas as well.

Let us know what you think of the new site by sending your feedback to editor@propertyadguru.com as we are constantly looking to improve and ensure we are presenting the most topical information to our readers.

Not only is this a great way to promote your listings to an international audience, it is also a great tool to differentiate yourself from your competitors when marketing to potential sellers.

If you would like to be a guinea pig and help us test the application for free, just go to www.listglobally.com and click the link on the home page to register for a free trial. Once we receive your request, we will be in touch via email with your login details.

The news just over a week ago that Google was “entering” the UK/European market has sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. Seloger dropped by 9% while Rightmove has plummeted a whopping 17%. Seloger has since recovered to its pre-news price while Rightmove continues to be significantly down.

So let’s look at what happened, will the property portal landscape change and is this impact on the share prices is justified.

An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia.

Google “entered” the Australian market 6 months ago (July 2009) when they made it possible for agents, brokers, franchise groups, and portal sites to place their listings on Google Maps. When a user does a search on Google Maps (not the main Google search) for real estate, Google plots the houses in its database on the maps and users can then click on the various dots to see if they like the houses and then are driven back to the advertiser’s site.

At that time, there was a similar uproar and many were predicting the death of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au and the REA Group share price dropped nearly 7% from $5.90 to $5.50. However in the 6 months since the announcement by Google, the REA Group share price has increased 60% to $8.84, the traffic to the site has increased from 4.5m UB’s in June 09 to 5.4m UB’s in October and analysts are predicting an additional 20% revenue growth for the REA Group in FY 2010.

In August, PropertyPortalWatch wrote about the challenges for Google knocking over the market leaders. Here is the link to the article called “The Challenges for Google Real Estate”. All of these still hold true.

Many hope that Google will be the saviour from the “big bad” commercial property portals and deliver free marketing to the agents. However this is a simplistic view and underestimates the challenges Google faces. The challenges include gaining enough listings, maintaining their quality, driving traffic to the maps area, and ensuring the interface is attractive to consumers.

Even if Google is successful in addressing the above, they will only be delivering clicks to the agent’s site not email leads. The agents will need to invest more in higher quality sites to convert the clicks to leads. This, of course, comes at a cost. The old adage holds true, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

It will be interesting times and if I was an agent, I would be putting my listings on Google. However, any clicks I get from Google should be supplemental to my existing online marketing strategy and not replacing my use of established portal sites.

This new search option comes after Google Maps added a real estate option to the “more” menu, allowing users to view a layer displaying listings, earlier this month.

Google Maps has also added in Place Pages for each listing:

This means that clicking the “more info” link next to a listing takes users to what is described as “a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: photos, inspection times, videos, details, a Street View preview and nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to quickly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing.”

The Google Maps Australia blog post does not say whether the new search functionality and Place Page option have been added to all locations, and the official Google Earth and Maps blog is currently quiet on the subject, however a search for “real estate” on maps.google.com and maps.google.co.uk presents the same listing results as on maps.google.com.au.

realestate.com.au is hoping to grab the attention of property hunters with this new website, but they haven’t forgotten real estate agents, who are invited to become Local Experts by earning points for participation.

As the website explains, the Local Expert program could be used to give agents free exposure to people looking for property in their area, and it could also generate traffic to their websites.

The Local Expert idea has elements of zillow.com’s Top Contributors program and trulia.com’s Voices section, both of which promote real estate professionals who participate.

Australian advertising sales company The Ad Network has just signed deals with real estate companies including LJ Hooker, Century 21, Laing+Simmons, First National and Richardson & Wrench to represent their websites to advertisers.

The Ad Network, founded in 2008, states that its real estate focused advertising network gives advertising partners access to one million monthly unique browsers. Managing director Beth O’Brien explained the new deal in a company statement:

“The Ad Network makes accessible Australia’s top real estate brands for media buyers through one provider. These assets provide an advertiser with superior brand association and access to a highly targeted and serious property investor market, perfect for home loan and home insurance advertisers.”

O’Brien predicts that the recent addition of real estate agent listings to Google Maps will lead to greater real estate agent website usage as consumers bypass property portals.

“Their [real estate agents'] traffic is increasing phenomenally and for them it is now about generating revenue from the right brands and from premium brands,” O’Brien told The Australian newspaper. “The new Nielsen NetView data shows that a significant percentage of traffic does not go to sites such as domain.com.au and realestate.com.au.”