In an on-stage interview during the Inman Real Estate Connect conference this week in San Francisco Google's Carter Maslan said that the company was not pushing into real estate specifically or going to build a direct national database of property listings and become a "universal MLS": "What we are doing in real estate is really (no different than) what we are doing in (other areas of) local search," Maslan said. If there's a property for sale, wherever its mentioned on the Web -- whether on "Rotten Neighborhoods" or Trulia.com -- Google wants to put those pages at users' fingerti [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Place Pages | Search Engines: Real Estate

Google is making its intentions in the real estate vertical more clear. Speaking this week at Inman Real Estate Connect, an industry conference, Google's Sam Sebastian reportedly said: "We're actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month." (Update: We now understand that the Realtor.org blog post linked above may have misquoted Google's Sam Sebastian. Via this tweet, this attendee blog post, and a comment below, it appears Sebastian may have been referring to acquisitions in general, not specific real estate acquisitions. We'll contact Google for clarification.) [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Google: Acquisitions | Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Real Estate | Top News

While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR's thunder. How? By rolling out individual "place pages" for every property that's listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle: The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for "Directions" and "Search nearby," as well as a "Send" link that opens an outgoin [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Google: Place Pages | Search Engines: Real Estate | Top News

MLS, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Craigslist, fellow real estate listings sites, newspapers and other classified ad providers ... please meet your new neighbor: Google.com. Google has expanded its real estate listings and added extra search functionality for users to find property listings in Google Maps. A Google Maps search for "seattle real estate" looks mostly like it always has -- listings of real estate agents and brokers on a map. But right below the search box is a hard-to-miss invitation to search current real estate listings. And the result, at least in this Seattle example, l [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Real Estate | Top News

Google has offered the capacity to search real estate listings for a long time. For example, when entering queries such as "homes for sale in San Francisco," a "one box" result used to show pull-down menus for "location" and "listing type." Activating these boxes would then lead into a specialized "Google Base" screen that allowed for further refinement. I found those screens as recently as earlier this week but today couldn't duplicate them. However, earlier this week Google exposed a "real estate" filter, among others, on Maps. A search in my old San Francisco zip 94118 shows these listi [...]

Related Topics: Google: Maps & Local | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Real Estate