I am a pretty religious reader of the work done by Brian Boero, Mark Davidson and the crew at 1000Watt Consulting. If you're planning to stay in the business a few years their blog should definitely be one to add to your RSS Reader.
In one of their most recent posts, Brian highlighted the move Google made to start including real estate information on their Google Maps service. I don't think it really surprised anyone that Google made the move, they've been collecting real estate data (including all of yours) through their GoogleBase service for years now.
So now a consumer can go to a Google Map and by searching for "real estate" they will not only get results but will also get them placed on the map. This is a big deal. Consumers will love it. Realtor.com will hate it. Agents who get on board now will benefit - especially when Google takes the next logical step and ties the listing to the property's YouTube video. Wow.
The question has arose (arisen?) whether this makes MLS services unnecessary. I don't think we are there just yet (although there is plenty of evidence on both sides of the argument) but it does prove to me that anything is possible.
Agents - pay attention to what is on Google. Learn how to maximize what is on Google. At the end of the day it may become your MLS.
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