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Real Estate Search Engine Comparison

This test was conducted Friday, Jan 18^th for zip code 30107.

Kris Berg in San Diego recently wrote an article comparing and contrasting the different real estate search engines. Please read her article, as I don’t want to rehash her excellent points. My goal is to apply her analysis method to our local market here in Cherokee County and then interpret these results for our local audience.

To echo Kris’ point, your local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is the most comprehensive resource for accessing available homes on the market. In our case, the local MLS is First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS) with some overlap from GA MLS.

In order to get a sample size that is easy to handle and within most search engine results limits, I chose Ball Ground, GA as my test market. Specifically, I searched zip code 30107 and found these results:

Visit http://maxsell.net/blog to see the results.

Posted by Brad Nix on 01/20/2008 10:05 AM

Comments (5)

real estate search engine

This post has been included in Georgia Information Cherokee County, GA Information Ball Ground, GA Information

5 Comments on Real Estate Search Engine Comparison

This is a very interesting post as we market in Ballground

01/20/2008 10:30 AM

by Charlie Ragonesi Big Canoe homes, Jasper ,Ball Ground,Benttree,Dahlonega (All Mountain Realty)

Truly interesting. I have you done further research into the differences? I know that may be difficult, but it would be an interesting to see if your assumption for the differences is correct. Is it possible that the other sites may list some FSBO which are not on the FMLS? Personally, thank you for the post, because I would like to delve further into this idea.

01/20/2008 10:38 AM

by Frank Schulte-Ladbeck (Frank Schulte-Ladbeck Professional Real Estate Inspections)

Morning Brad, Quite interesting data. I'm not in that market but understand the implications. Nice analysis of the differences.

01/20/2008 10:39 AM

by Bill Gillhespy Fort Myers Beach Realtor (Century 21 Tripower Realty)

Frank:

The sites I analyzed do not use FSBO listings in their data. The differences are mostly due to the lack of broker listing feeds. Trulia requires brokers to sign up and submit their feeds. Which would eliminate a ton of brokers who are not aware of the Trulia service and feed requirements. Let me know if you discover other differences during your research.

Charlie:

Do you use any of the services I analyzed when marketing to your Ball Ground market?

01/20/2008 10:49 AM

by Brad Nix (Maxsell Real Estate)

I ran a similar test (although without as many different aggregators) with similar results in another ZIP code. Here is the result.

http://lanebailey.com/2007/12/13/mls-zillow-trulia/

When I started looking at the results individually, I ran across a lot of sold properties as well as withdrawn and expireds that were still listed as for sale.

Good job.

01/25/2008 09:58 PM

by Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy (Diamond Dwellings Realty)

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