Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

While real estate prices are still on the rise in most metro markets, the Internet real estate landscape is booming as well. There’s a slew of new vertical real estate sites for the curious and the serious investor.

While approximately $12 billion dollars is spent annually on real estate marketing, much of it is still going to traditional media, according to the National Association of Realtors. Only $1 - 2 billion of that is expected to be spent online in 2006. Yet, a whopping 77% of U.S. home buyers user the Internet during their housing search, up from 2% in 1995. The growth potential for online real estate advertising is obviously significant.

This vertical is growing up – quickly. No wonder real estate vertical sites abound, from instant home value appraisal tool, Zillow, to MyNewPlace, an apartment rental search enginel, to nationwide search aggregators for new and existing homes and rentals, such as Home.com.

U.S. real estate sites saw a 23% increase in traffic from April 2005 to April 2006, according to comScore Networks. This represents 42 million unique monthly visitors to sites such as Move.com, MSN Real Estate, HomeGain, AOL Real Estate, RealtyTrac.com, Rent.com, Apartments.com and Zillow.com.

Property Centric entered the real estate vertical this year. Their service offering is geared toward local search specifically designed for residents of property management companies and home owners associations. By providing an online daily-use resident amenity, Property Centric’s search provides more loyalty, rentals/home purchases and profitability for real estate companies. For more about their case study with a Phoenix-based property management firm, Mark-Taylor Residential, check out our latest newsletter, “Apartment Management Company Seeks Local Search Engine Amenity.

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Online advertising is no longer the experimental outlet it once was: in fact, 80% of businessesmarket online. Although, it’s not as if traditional advertising mediums will vanish, but the tide has shifted: the Internet is where consumers research, hang out, and receive influential information.

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Distinguishing between various makes of search engines these days requires more than just a casual knowledge of search technology. With so much focus on the big search players and their related search advertising, it can seem that there exists just one important type of search: Web search. Familiarizing yourself with the benefits of other search technologies such as vertical site search will help you get the most out of your searches, your customer relationships and your advertising dollars.

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This week, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) released a first-time study of 350 people, tracking their activities every 15 seconds. The study, “A Day in the Life: An Ethnographic Study of Media” reveals that the Web is quite clearly a mass media, accounting for 20-25% of consumers’ overall media time. The Web outpaces other media at work with 54.6% reach (TV was 21.1%) and was in the top two of at-home media influence. The online population also regularly consumes other media such as TV and radio simultaneously or near their Web time./p>

Yet, the Web only accounts for about 8% of ad dollars. While the shift of ad budgets to online has been happening in recent years, there is still a vast untapped opportunity in online advertising. Advertisers everywhere: take note! That’s why we say, no need for bubble talk anymore.

Pam Horan, OPA president, stated, “Based on our real-world observations, it is clear that consumers are consistently online even while they’re watching TV or listening to the radio. This unique attribute of Web usage means that advertising messages receive a dramatic boost when online is part of the buy.”

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What does one of Arizona’s largest apartment development companies do when it needs to provide a bigger, better amenity for its 12,000+ Internet-savvy residents? Mark-Taylor Residential followed the right steps to build its web presence, increase repeat site traffic and make their site a worthwhile resource for prospects and residents. Find out what led them to local search and how they’re applying it to improve their business on many levels.

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