Comments on: Purchasing eyeballs

By: Rob Balasabas

Rob Balasabas — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:44:12 +0000

It’s human nature for some people to learn the rules and find ways to use them to gain advantages. Immoral or genius?

By: Doug Quance

Doug Quance — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:29:00 +0000

Yikes! $19.32 per click? You gotta be kidding!

And I thought $3.00 a click was too expensive.

I can only imagine how much “click fraud” is taking place…

By: Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:28:10 +0000

Google makes it very clear that Adwords is advertising. There is no problem then with people buying pay-per-click for other terms if it generates clicks. It is no different than a Windermere ad showing up next to an article about Redfin in the Seattle Times. Its advertising, and the reader knows it.

No one searching for Windermere Seattle on Google is going to click on a pay-per-click for Redfin thinking its Windermere. If they do, then Redfin looses a pretty penny for not making good advertising decisions.

Another thing to think about is that Google is doing this in reverse through AdSense. I often have ads for various Seattle Real Estate Brokerages show up on my blog. I am clearly not these brokerages. My blog users recognize this though, because Google has posted “Ads by Google” right next to the ads.

Personally, I think pay-per-click is a waste of money… but thats just my opinion.

By: Marlow Harris

Marlow Harris — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:08:56 +0000

Ha ha!

I’m also amazed about how much online real estate brokers are paying for these ads and PPC. Redfin recently noted that they’re paying $1000.00 a week for PPC on Google, and that’s just a fraction of their advertising costs.

A quick search of Google notes that the term “Real Estate in Seattle” is costing $7.35 per click. But “MLS Seattle real estate” is a staggering $19.32 per click. How can these firms keep racking up these costs?

By: Steve Jagger

Steve Jagger — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:52:26 +0000

I bet shortly you will be coming up under â€œprudential real estate agents seattleâ€ just due to this post.

By: Marlow Harris

Marlow Harris — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:48:55 +0000

I’m often astounded at how people come to my website, often through the back door or riding that long tail. For instance, I come up #3 on Google for the search “www.Anna.Nicole” and get dozens of visitors that way. Unfortunately, few are shopping for a new home in Seattle I DO, however, get a lot of buyers who find me by searching for “unusual Seattle homes for sale” or Artistic, Modern or Vintage homes for Sale in Seattle.

As a side note, I do wonder how many buyers and sellers Zip Realty, JustListed.com and Real Estate.com are siphoning away from my business by buying the search term “Seattle Dream Homes”. http://www.JustListed.com is a House Values company and http://www.RealEstate.com is owned by Lending Tree.

By: Ubertor Real Estate Blog » Real Estate News

Ubertor Real Estate Blog » Real Estate News — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:08:23 +0000

[...] – Curbed.com out of New York shows us a home that is listed for $4,800/sf and what they did to sell it – Marlow Harris discusses companies buying other companies names in Google Pay Per Click – Sellsius – the 2007 NAR Code of Ethics Prohibits Deceptive Meta Tags [...]

By: Steve Jagger

Steve Jagger — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:50:12 +0000

I always find it interesting to see websites fighting over terms that are highly competitive but with not that many people searching for that phrase.

Here are some numbers:

In the last 24 hours, 190 people searched for “seattle realtors” with 746 websites competing for that term.

In the last 24 hours, 72 people searched for “seattle realtor” with 12600 websites competing for that term.

In the last 24 hours, 198 people searched for “seattle real estate for sale” with 15500 websites competing for that term.

In the last 24 hours, 157 people searched for “seattle real estate agent” with 13700 websites competing for that term.

That does NOT include the pay per click websites.

These are not terms I would be paying for or targeting in the search engines.. there are more effective terms that you don’t need to pay for that you can get your site coming up under… here is an example or two:

In the last 24 hours “prudential real estate agents seattle” was searched in Google 78 times with 1 website competing for that term.

In the last 24 hours “Real Estate home Listing Seattle WA” was searched in Google 73 times with 35 websites competing for that term.

By: Athol Kay

Athol Kay — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:25:41 +0000

Is your business name / phrase trademarked? Would that make any difference in terms of getting them to stop? (I don’t know, just posing the question)

As always though, makes a great case for blogging and earning your page rank. For myself I skip over paid search results at least 95% of the time.