I, too, have really been questioning my AR participation. I only post there to give myself links – but if they’re not worthy why waste my time? Although I’m not real active there, I might cut my posting there even more. I’m still on the fence.

I agree that consumers are looking for advice as well as listings. One advantage my local site currently has over T or Z is data accuracy. This is an advantage I have over some of the local agents web site as well and it has built trust with some consumers and has resulted in closed sales because the data on my site turned out to be more accurate than other sites they were visiting. I do think we as agents need to also consider ways to engage the users of sites more – to create that same sort of experience that consumers get when they visit some of these other places.

I also agree that SEO can easily become less important – although I’m personally very interested in search right now – I’m very aware that how consumers find things on the internet could change – social media is already changing some people’s search behavior.

It is daunting to think of the money these big players have to spend vs. an individual agent’s (or team’s) budget. One thing we as individuals don’t often talk about is what will happen when some of the larger brokerages really get interested in playing the internet game. However, I don’t subscribe to what ifs and if you can’t beat them join them – but I’m not a typical agent – I really have found I like the website/internet marketing part and I will do what it takes to make this work for me. The platform Trulia and Zillow have set up does not offer the same lead capture that my site has and that really is the key. Not all of the leads coming into my site are valid or even good leads, but they are a steady stream. Waiting for consumers to take the initiative and call or email has a much lower return – real estate is all a numbers game – the more leads, the more potential clients – it’s that simple.

You made some very good and insightful points. However, home buyers seem to prefer aggregated listings along side with meaningful real estate advice from folks like you. They don’t mind googling for it now but this might not last long. The web is moving away from one search engine fits all and moving towards one for each vertical. As both trulia and zillow build their brand name, people will see value in visiting them directly.

For instance, google was the destination for food spots a couple years back but most ppl go to yelp for food. Why? Coz yelp has a platform for foodies that is beyond just ratings. Some food critics initially might have fought it but contributions kept coming from most. Eventually, the ones that started on yelp early stood to gain !

I cannot speak for realtor.com but I do notice that more and more first timers, potentially home buyers, are flocking to zillow and trulia. If you don’t believe me, just go to google trends and look for yourself.

So, my point is that while good seo is important, it presumes that people will use google/yahoo/msn search in the first place as much as they do now. Both you and I know these companies are backed by the same people that built google and microsoft. So, if they believe that real estate search can be better through T or Z and are spending millions of dollars to make it so AND home buyers agree (increasingly so), do you think we should fight it just to look smarter in the short term ?

Like you said, its a loosing battle. why not join them and take advantage of all that is free on their platform?

In no time, a new player will come to change the game.

I’m actually contemplating not blogging on Activerain either. I could put the same content on one of my blogs. However, I do find it fun to receive the comments and points. I question the quality of links that I am sending to my site from Activerain. I don’t think they are that valuable.