Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

My girlfriend, who is a brilliant researcher at the Bank of America, recently sent me this link for an interview with Eric Schmidt. If you’d like to hear the thoughts and vision of one of the leading technologists on the planet (and possibly adjust your business accordingly) then this video is worth 20 minutes of your time.

Enjoy

Just the other day I was inside Google Mail trying to combat my ever increasing inbox when Adsense (Googles text-based ad platform) decided to show me an ad for the ‘GoogleHouse.’

Being curious, I decided to click-thru and see what this was about and ‘lo and behold, it’s a property site. But not just any website, it was a website that had one purpose; to sell one property located up in Highbury.

This is not a new idea to the property space. Various companies have products that build these for you, notably Vflyer, Estate Create (in beta), and Postlets to name but a few. It’s not hard or costly to get a web designer, buy a domain and then put up your brochure. Then you buy some targeted traffic from the likes of Google and Yahoo and watch the leads come in.

We just wonder if this is the future of online listings or just another marketing feather for your cap?

It is very clever of this seller to use the name ‘GoogleHouse’ as I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s getting an artificially high click-thru rate due to the ‘attractive’ name. Google obviously doesn’t seem to mind as the ad is approved and running within gmail Interesting times.

It’s interesting what you can get away with when you’re the 800-pound gorilla in the room. According to a recent article from Estate Agent Today, Rightmove has stated two things to a struggling agent;

1. Stop advertising in expensive newspapers
2. You need to pay increased joining fee’s in order to make up for the investment we made in our product historically

Rather than enter the fray, I’ll let our readers comment on this Shipside ’snafu’.

I’ll also offer a piece of advice to our struggling estate agent in Buckinghamshire; Google AdWords. With 595 pounds in spend you’ll be able to drive over 2,500 targeted visits to your website at a 23p CPC.

If you’re like me, you’re constantly on the lookout for disruptive internet technologies. This past week has seen an amazing PR push for a new search engine run by some ex-employees of Google. It’s called Cuil.

According to the blogosphere and press, here are the salient bits:

1. it’s run by smart ex-Google people
2. they claim it’s index is 3 times bigger than Google
3. it is more compact (doesn’t need all those thousands of machines to run fast)
4. it’s going to be a better experience

Of course, there are thousands of alternative search engines out there who claimed similar things over the years. If you want to see a list, just check out Alt Search Engines. Anyway, thought I would have a fiddle to see how Cuil works for the UK property market for typical searches.

1. Search query - property NW6. No less than 5 links on the first page for Foxtons. Judgement - This is not a great user experience to get 5 links from the same place.
2. Search query - mews property chester for sale - no results. Judgement - not happy
3. Search query - georgian house to let cornwall - no results. Judgement - not happy
4. Search query - hampstead 3 bedroom flat to let - 4 links from same website. Judgement - Bad user experience.

Ok, so this isn’t fair to Cuil in that after 4 queries, I haven’t really tested it fairly. However, I think Cuil has a long way to go in order to be “Cuil” for the property searcher in this country. Try it yourself for random queries and see what you think.

And yes, the vast majority of search users (everyone) are just as fickle as me and do not have much patience for search that doesn’t work. Yahoo is just a click away let alone Ask.com and MSN. But I suppose as long as you put ‘beta’ on your website, that’s ok. You’ve got an excuse for everything that doesn’t work. Well done.