It was only a few short years ago that the phrase “social media” was likely to produce a bewildered stare or a snort of derision from anyone over the age of 21. But after a thousand webinars and breathless conference presentations – not to mention the prospect of 600 million-plus potential leads – many real estate agents are Facebooking and Tweeting with the best of them.
But just as the real estate world has begun to get a handle on re-tweet etiquette and Facebook “likes,” Google has come along with its own social media service – and the tactics the search giant is using may force Realtors and brokers to pay attention.
Google rolled out its social media service, Google+, last year. Google+ saw a rush of signups out of the gate from curious social media users, and with a heavy push from its corporate parent, grew its number of users to 62 million by the end of the year, according to stats released by the company.
Janet Porcaro, an agent with Pathway Home Realty Group in Newton, was one of them. She said the new service’s organizational features and sheer newness help give it a leg up on more established sites like Facebook.
“I personally started using Google+ for a volunteer project that I’m on a committee for in Newtonville,” Porcaro said. “And I personally think it’s great because it allows you to have different [circles] and allows them to be locked, so you can keep it in-house if you want. Or you can let it be shared. I just think that the circles are more intuitive,” than Facebook’s more basic friend rosters.
Oversharing of business-related posts has given Facebook “kind of a bad name among some people,” said Porcaro. “If you say ‘Facebook’ they kind of hold up the crucifix to say ‘stay away!’ you know?”
Unfair Advantage?
But while it’s clear Google+ has attracted a following among the tech-savvy crowd, its user numbers are dwarfed by the 800 million-strong membership boasted by Facebook, and still less than Twitter’s 100 million users. It’s also less than clear how many of Google’s claimed 62 million users might have signed on to have a look-see at the company’s social media offering, but don’t regularly use the service.
But that may soon be changing, in large part because of a series of recent moves by Google, culminating in the rollout of the company’s new “personal search” earlier this month.
The new feature changes the way search results are displayed in Google. When it’s turned on, users will see results especially tailored to them at the top of the company’s search results.
For example, if your dog’s name is Beethoven, a search on that word might show a row of personal results at the top of the page including pictures and posts from you and your friends about your pup – all placed above the more traditional links from the web at large regarding the famous composer.
What’s more, the personal search is much more accurate if the user is logged into a Google+ or Google Mail (GMail) account while searching, which makes it easier for Google to know who they’re friends with and, subsequently, which users’ results to show.
And while Google is using its own Google+ service as a source for such results, it notably does not include info from Facebook and Twitter.
The feature has already provoked a storm of controversy, with complaints mostly alleging the new personal search method gives Google+ an unfair advantage. Google is “clearly” favoring its own product, “turn[ing] Google+ into an essential social network for any search marketer,” writes Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a news site for web marketers and developers.
Sullivan’s experiments show that even when a user is searching on a neutral term like “music,” links to related companies and people to follow on Google+ are prominently included in the results.
Above The Fold
The reason the change is important comes down to human laziness. Experiments show that vast majority of users – long-trained to rely on Google’s accuracy – rarely, if ever, go beyond the first page of results when searching the web. Many don’t even scroll to the bottom of the page.
That makes the links which show “above the fold” – visible in a user’s browser window when it loads – especially valuable.
Given the favorable placement for Google+ results, only those companies and individuals with a presence on the new social media service will pop up in the more desirable above the fold zone – even for generic searches, such as, say, “real estate.”
Some realtors and agents who already use the service feel like that might be a good thing, even if it does create still one more social media and search engine optimization hoop to jump through in order for agents to make sure all their based are covered.
“Too many folks learned how or paid people who learned how to ‘get their site higher’ in search engine,” said Jake Clayton, executive director of business development at Barrett & Co. in Concord. “I believe one of the main reasons Google started switching things up is because social is the new relevancy to most people.”
Mike Hughes, an agent with RE/MAX Leading Edge in Newton, said he’s been pleased with how some Google+ features integrate with his real estate role. The +1 feature – Google’s rough equivalent to a facebook “like” – has been particularly handy, he said.
“If I run across a listing for a Newton assessor in Google, I might +1 that, and then when people are searching for it, they’ll find me,” said Hughes. “It’s a way to fly in under the radar and come up in people’s search results.”
Those are the kinds of tactics that more real estate agents might need to learn.
“I can’t say I’ve yet had people say to me, ‘Oh, hey I found you because you were doing x,y,z [on Google+].’ But I think it’s something that more and more people are going to be tracking just because of the way Google integrates with everything else that we do,” said Hughes. “I’ve had appointments where people say, ‘We like that you know how this works.’”
Google’s new social media site is free – and powerful.
