Sydicated Columnist Bernice Ross has an interesting colum this week speculating on the possible consequences for real estate of recent changes to how Google does searches. (Ross’ column is behind a paywall, but marketer Erik Goldhar covers many of the same bases here.)  

The crux of the matter is the new “Knowlegde Graph” the company is rolling out. Apparently somebody at Google noticed all those searches people were making to settle bar bets and pin down whether that guy playing the CSI lab tech was in fact the same actor from that one Tom Hanks movie, and they’re planning on inserting a little box right on the search results page that can tell you the vital statistics of what you’re searching for. If you’re searching for Tom Cruise, those stats might be his birthday, spouse’s name, famous movie roles and height — Google says the info in its little box can answer 37 percent of people’s search queries for ol’ Top Gun.   

But Ross and Goldhar are worried that that same logic, applied to real estate search, could mean the end of syndication as we know it. (What doesn’t, these days?) Here’s Ross:

In short, the Knowledge Graph is designed to give people searching Google the information they want on the Google search page without having to click through to another website.

This could have a profound effect on listing syndication, especially for those who promote “buyer’s agents” next to another agent’s listing. Google will evaluate who has the listing and will probably return the best match for the search: the listing agent.

Companies that take information from other sites and use it on their own sites are known as “scrapers.” Goldhar asks a compelling question about Google: “Did all the scrapers just get scraped?”

In other words, unless you have a wealth of compelling content about the listing that gives Web visitors a reason to click through to your site, they will be able to get all the information they need from Google.

If everything’s on Google, then agents and brokers will need to be on Google too, Ross and Goldhar warn (Banker & Tradesman has covered Google’s favoritism toward its own social network, G+ and its consequence for real estate, before.)

That’s probably not a bad idea. But I find myself a little skeptical that real estate search works quite the same as regular search — at least so much so that Google will be able to use its “knowlege graph” to push sydicators out of business. There’s only one Tom Cruise, after all — but there’s hundreds of homes for sale that a buyer might be interested in perusing in any given area. A big part of what buyers do during thier browsing stage is give themselves a sense of the market, what’s available in their price range, what’s not, what amenities they can expect and which are rare. Unlike regular searches, where buyers are often looking for one perfect answer, with real estate they want to see a broad spectrum.

I’d think the bigger worry for brokers would be not that someone else’s listing pops up in the “Knowlege Graph” box but that someone else’s portal does. If a homebuyer types “homes in Seattle” into Google, is a single listing more relevant to them than a quick plug-in that gives a graph of recent changes in median price, along with a short list of popular neighborhoods and the best school districts, all brought to you by, say, Zillow.com/Seattle? Tech-savy national portals have the nimbleness to adapt quickly to the new search paradigm and the data to produce relevant results across the country.   — Colleen M. Sullivan