Today, Move, Inc. has announced an exclusive partnership with Blockshopper.com to “power its real estate ads and expand the online reach of agents and brokers.”
Blockshopper.com currently serves 20 markets and claims they’ve driven 800,000 unique visitors to their four million pages in January 2011 alone, double their traffic in January 2010, supporting their claim of rapid growth.
Two new hyperlocal products
The partnership between Move, Inc. and Blockshopper.com brings hyperlocal products to the ad network. Two Blockshopper.com tools “designed to increase local visibility and search engine indexing across the Web” will be available through Move, Inc. later this year including Local Note Pro and Agent News Releases.
Local Note Pro allows Realtors to create “notes” about properties “on which they have useful knowledge for active buyers, sellers and homeowners” which Move, Inc. states will boost agents’ visibility online.
Agent News Releases is said to help agents “make news” about their listings, sales and accomplishments.
Move, Inc. CEO weighs in
“Today BlockShopper.com covers 20 highly visible local markets across the country with great community-based ad products,” Berkowitz said. “As we work together in expanding BlockShopper’s coverage and products, Move’s real estate advertisers will be able to easily scale the reach of their brands on a personal and local level with the assistance and convenience of Move as their national marketing partner.”
But how will this work?
We haven’t seen the product in its finished version as a point of comparison, Local Notes Pro has us pondering the rich history of this very element in the industry. In years past, other real estate companies have attempted to open specific listings and neighborhoods to commentary (“notes”) but were shut down, most notably Redfin which was fined $50,000 by NWMLS and forced to discontinue not only because commentary was considered advertising another broker’s listing, it was considered altered marketing which is also not allowed. It seems that one agents “notes” with existing knowledge on any listing if not their own would fall into the category of disallowed. It will be interesting to see how allowing “notes” will work as Move, Inc. aims to expand their offering to their Realtor consumers.
One of Move, Inc’s companies, Realtor.com is an advertiser on AGbeat.
BawldGuy
March 9, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Had to read it twice to be sure of what it said. This is what happens when you let third parties mess with your product without a short leash and a cattle prod. Can’t wait to see the food fights generated by this one. I genuinely hope I’m wrong, but from where I stand, this should be filed under, ‘Ya just can’t make this stuff up’.
‘Course, this begs the real question, which is: How many of your listings are sold due to anything other than your direct efforts, the MLS, or similar methods? Not one in my personal experience.
Jill Kipnis
March 10, 2011 at 1:47 pm
We’re excited about working with Blockshopper, as it plays to both of our strengths: leveraging Move’s sales force and Blockshopper’s network. Blockshopper and its tools allows agents and brokers to show off their local expertise, helps them create buzz around the properties they are selling with news stories and comments, and creates visibility through SEO.
–Jill Kipnis, Community Builder @Realtor.com