Comments on: Could Google kill Domain?

By: Ben Shepherd

Ben Shepherd — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:43:23 +0000

I was reading The Age today and the lead story on the Business section was Fairfax and News Ltd talking about pulling their spends from Google around driving traffic to their real estate classifieds sites if they continue to try and compete against them on one hand, but on the other take their money …

Funny that.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:04:09 +0000

As someone who actually runs Domain accounts in my regional city, I can vouch that at least outside of capitals in each state we don’t give much to our agents in the way of kickbacks, but they do get free online ads with their print advertising, which is how most of them work here. The most they get is an invite to the client christmas party, which is some woolies platters and a movie

I personally like this, and I guess it’ll depend on price and the market of specific areas – here for example print still does well.

Almost every one of my clients are on both Domain and RE.com.au. As a buyer/renter my favourite part of Domain over RE.com.au is that I could view private listings that have come from classifieds etc as well as agent listings. The attachment to a paper worked for me in that respect and if the cost is high, private advertisers may not have the budget to afford it.

By: Jussi Pasanen

Jussi Pasanen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:51:11 +0000

I’m not sure about Google “killing” http://www.domain.com.au/ or http://www.realestate.com.au/ but they sure have some catching up to do from an user experience point of view.

From personal experience these leading Australian real estate sites both lack at least these basic features:

1. Humane keyword based search that gives you exact, reliable search results based on obvious queries like “Austin St, Manly NSW”

2. Search and narrow search results based on floor area (squares or square metres). Searching by just the number of bedrooms is insufficient.

By virtue of being Google their real estate search solves the first one seamlessly, and there’s provision for the second one as long as the incoming data feed includes the floor area information, which may still be an issue.

In fact, the inability to search residential real estate by floor area is such a glaring omission that I recently wrote an article about it:
http://www.volkside.com/2009/0.....loor-area/

It’s good to see fresh competition stirring up the market.

By: Real Yield

Real Yield — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:01:07 +0000

Old form classified including Domain, RealEstate.com.au and Seek should be destroyed by Google – they offer very little value – their search product are abysmal compared to Google and they charge like a stuck pig for yet again questionable yield

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:42:27 +0000

Try suburbview.com (no .au, realestateview squatted the .au domain). Melbourne based startup that mashes real estate listings and Google maps. They pull listings from a range of major sites.

Google’s effort is solid, but suburbview is a generation ahead in both search and scope.

By: Bye bye land rats « An Onymous Lefty

Bye bye land rats « An Onymous Lefty — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:02:08 +0000

[...] And you won’t be missed. [...]

By: Erin

Erin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:35:34 +0000

How do you get a property listing onto the Google Real estate?

By: Mapping the UX of Real Estate Searches at Scenario Girl

Mapping the UX of Real Estate Searches at Scenario Girl — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:58:37 +0000

[...] the moment. That’s not to say it isn’t useful, I just doubt it’s going to “badly hurt Australian websites“. While it does appear to be good at aggregating information usually found in the top three [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:03:09 +0000

It’s the plan from the very start. Google is like all very large corporations, they want to make money for their shareholders.

By: John

John — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:24:08 +0000

@Rodney

But isn’t the old saying “location location location”?

This is literally location. You can look at a top down map simply and pick exactly where you want to live. You can turn on satellite and see the colour of the roof, when the transport is, etc.

Agents while useful need to learn to adapt. This is probably going to be one of those ways.

By: Ben Shepherd

Ben Shepherd — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:21:16 +0000

Interesting but it’s solving a problem that doesn’t exist in my opinion. It’s making something that’s already pretty good a little bit better. To “kill” something (like Goog did with AV) you need to completely change the game and I’m unsure this does that.

Remember too – some of Google’s biggest clients are the Real Estate classifieds sites. There’s too many zeroes in the bottom line on those key accounts for them to attack them directly.

By: TONY RICHARDSON

TONY RICHARDSON — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:01:07 +0000

As a landlord, this beats Domain and the other one hands down.

By: carrob

carrob — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:45:18 +0000

It’s a good mashup.

Makes me wonder. How hard would this be to do with hotels? A map of the hotels available where I am looking to stay would seem fairly easy to do using the data from wotif et al. Add on some decents pics of the rooms etc and you would be onto something that could potentially have far more frequent usage and give google a better ROI..

By: chris Kamen

chris Kamen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:38:39 +0000

wow!

time to start looking for a new home.

By: Rodney A Smith

Rodney A Smith — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:57:53 +0000

No Google will not kill either Domain or Real Estate Dot Com. There is room for both. Having worked in the property industry for 40 + years there is ever more comment about sales people & consumers becoming too reliant upon electronic formats of promotion. This is making estate agents lazy, except those who still maintain a high level of personal contact. Google has been a tool in the space for a long time, but is just that another tool. Person to person contact is still the winner. But yes I do agree that both the big sites are terrible to use and they have turned into revenue cows. A big mistake. Google might just encourage them to improve their offer and give better value to consumers & advertisers.