With the recent take over of Yahoo search by Bing many changes have been occurring in the Yahoo search engine results pages.  If you were someone who was doing better on Yahoo's search results than Bing's, this recent change has probably cost you traffic.  If on the other hand, you had been doing better on Bing than Yahoo, you may be seeing a nice bump in your traffic as the Yahoo SERPs are starting to look and function a lot like Bing.

For MLS Maps, a national directory of local mls listings and real estate marketing company, this recent change has given us a nice lift in our traffic as we were already more favored by Bing's algorithm than Yahoo's.  This is really showing up in the search phrase MLS listings, for which we have recently moved up on both Yahoo and Bing providing our site with considerably more visitors looking for real estate and homes for sale nationwide.

As a result of all this, "MLS Listings" is now the #1 organic search term driving visitors to our site and ultimately clicking through to local real estate agents and brokers who are providing the MLS listings data on their sites.  In addition to "mls listings", MLS Maps is also seeing steady traffic from over 1,200 different keyword combinations that include "mls", "listings", "maps" and local city names like phoenix mls map search , or winston salem mls .  We're thrilled about this traffic mix as it's always safer to have your traffic coming from a wide variety of search phrases and sources versus just one or two big ones.

All that said, fact of the matter is that Google is still the biggest search engine out there with roughly 75% of all search traffic.  If you are trying to drive more traffic to your local real estate website, this is where you are going to focus most if not all your SEO efforts.  The good news is that every so often you will get lucky and stumble upon a tactical combination that also yields high rankings on Bing and now Yahoo too. 

I don't know about the rest of you but I'll happily take traffic from any search engine that will send it to me!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Agentopolis recently released our social media updates for Realtors and their families, friends and past clients.  We've seen a lot of new traffic with this release and the "Top 100" agents by state are starting to fill out.

Here is a link to the current standing for the Top 100 Florida Realtors base on "likes". If you don't like where you rank, send an email to your past clients asking for their support, that is what many of the top ranked agents have already done.

Member agents can also add links to their Facebook, Twitter and blog sites and visitors can easily follow these links to learn more about you or to "like", follow or comment on your social media sites.

I'm happy to report that we have had only positive feedback with our new ranking system and very few technical problems which just makes life easier on everybody.

Enjoy!

Please excuse our recent hickup at www.mnonlinemls.com as we switched hosting companies and the switch did not go as planned, imagine that!

We are back up and now you can search for Minnesota mls listings fast and free.  Also note that we have now included VOWs data so serious home shoppers can find out information about Minnesota real estate and Minneapolis homes for sale like;

• Days on market
• Original list price, and
• Price history

Enjoy and please share our site with anyone you know who is looking for a home in the Minneapolis - St. Paul metro area of Minnesota.

After years of toiling with different ideas about how to rank agents by consumer opinion and experience, Agentopolis has finally launched a new way for a Realtor’s family, friends and past clients to quickly and easily become a fan by simply click on our new “like” button next to the agent’s name.

Simply clicking the “like” button will increase the total number of fans for that agent by 1.  No email confirmation is required for the person “liking” you.  They simply click “like” and they are done.  Once they refresh the page, they will see that their vote for you has been counted. 

The last time we rolled out a Realtor recommendation system on Agentopolis, there were a number of agents who expressed concerns about how other agents might game the system. We tried to consider all the ways that a real estate agent might try to game our new “like” rating system and we believe, for the most part, it will be difficult for them to cheat our Agent ranking system. 

The obvious concern would be if dishonest agents simply went to their listing on Agentopolis and clicked the “like” button next to their name 100+ times.  Ya, we kind of thought that might happen so we put some technology in place to make it very difficult to accomplish that dishonest goal.

We hope you like our new Agent Rating process and stay tuned for news about the new Social Media Follow tags we are rolling out.

Minnesota MLS listings have been available to local home buyers for quite a long time now.  In spite of that fact, many Minnesota home buyers still have trouble finding a site with easy access to the Minnesota Multiple Listing Service data.  Part of the problem is how people search for homes for sale in Google.

Minnesota real estate gets searched 4-1 versus Minnesota MLS yet the SERP for Minnesota MLS yields far more direct hits to sites offering easy access to the mls listings.  It seems that more people are now including the term "mls" in their search when looking for real estate and homes for sale and I expect to see this continue to grow.

The next thing to happen to real estate search in Google will be when the RPR or Realtors Property Resource launches.  Originally slated as a Realtor tool, I've heard that they are busy signing up local real estate boards and aggregating mls listings.  If this should come to pass, it will add one more confusing layer to the home buyers search for easy access to MLS listings in Minnesota and all over the country.

Stay tuned!

When I first heard this about 15 years ago, I felt as if a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.  For the first time in my life I realized that I had a simple process for dealing with any problem, challenge, situation or obstacle.  I have lived a more peaceful life ever since.  Here are the only three things we can do when faced with something we don’t like;

1. We can try to change it. (notice I didn’t say “them” because I have learned the hard way that I can’t make people change)
2. If we can’t change it, we can decide to accept it. (this is actually the first of two options when dealing with people problems)
3. If we can’t change it and we won’t accept it, our only remaining option is to walk away.

Need I say more?

Everyone knew that Minnesota real estate sales would dip or adjust after the $8,000 home buyer tax credit ended, we just didn't know by how much.  The May housing stats are out for Minneapolis real estate sales and it appears to have been a healthy dip for the same period last year.  As a matter of fact, it looks like Twin Cities home sales reached a record low with the fewest pending sales in May since the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors started been keeping records in 1997.

That said, three homes have sold within 30 days of the sign going up in my neighborhood recently.  I live in a nice middle class neighborhood in an OK school disctrict.  The homes, which were once valued in the low 400's, sold in the low 300's. I beleive that one seller was the original owner so odds are they weren't upside down on their mortgage like so many Minnesota home buyers who purchasd real estate in Minneapolis between 2004-2007.

I think the first-time-home-buyer party is over, at least for a while and from what I can see in my neighborhood, the market is slowly coming back in that moderate second home category, $250,000 - $350,000.  I also have to believe that we will be seeing a much higher quality of home buyer in the near future and also much better educated home buyers. 

As usual the Minneapolis real estate business  is down but not out. 

Follow this link for the full article; http://ow.ly/1XkDJ

Click on these links if you would like to see Minnesota MLS listings or would like information on a Minnesota mortgage.

MLS Maps has recently seen it's Google rankings rise for a number of cities and terms including;

• Phoenix mls map
• Denver mls map
• Las Vegas mls map
• Miami mls map search

Organic traffic at MLSMaps.com continues to grow with Google being the biggest search engine referrer followed by Bing and then Yahoo.  The terms "mls" and "map" occured in 111 different phrases in the month of March and the word "map" appeared in 285 different keyword phrases that drove real estate buyer traffic to MLSMaps.com.  The three search phrases that were the biggest drivers of traffic for March were;

• MLS Map
• MLS Map search
• MLS maps

Our MLS Maps Blog is also starting to rank high in Google for searches related to map based property search. Clearly map based real estate search is a growing segment of the real estate industry and it's good to see a number of new map based IDX options available to real estate agents who want to market on the Internet.

While there are obviously fewer searches on Bing compared with Google, the pending deal between Microsoft and Yahoo regarding search should make Bing more relevant to search marketers in the near future.  Add to that fact that Microsoft has budgeted roughly $100,000,000 to promote Bing and it's starting to look like we should pay attention.

Below is a list of searches on Microsoft's Bing search engine that include the words "MLS" and "maps". As with Google, the occurance of MLS & Map in the same search phrase is on the rise. The list below is in rank order by number of searches.  Each keyword phrase is linked to the corresponding Bing search engine results page (serp).

mls map
mls map search
mls maps
mls area map
mlsmaps
mls listings map
mls search by map
austin mls service map
austin texas mls map
dallas mls map search
dayton oh mls mapping
flagstaff mls by map
florida mls map
florida mls map search
gmls maps
map mls listings in spokane wa
map of mls
map of mls listings
mls by map
mls list map seattle
mls listing by map
mls listing map for ok
mls listings by map
mls map boise
mls map houston
mls map listing
mls map search cleveland ohio
mls maps gulfport ms
mls real estate by map
mls, indianapolis, in, map
mlsmap
mlsmaps.com
oregon mls listing map
real estate mls search map
richmond mls map
san antonio mls search map-based
san francisco mls map
search mls on map
view mls area map
flagstaff mls map
texas mls map search

These keyword search phrases are from February traffic on MLSMaps.com

As you might expect, the occurance of the word "map" in search phrases that include "mls" is on the rise.  As we start 2010 there are more IDX providers that offer map based mls search and we are finding more and more agent sites that offer their local visitors a map based view of available listings in their area. 

As I mentioned before, I still think that Map Tracks from Wolfnet Technologies is still the best user interface for home shoppers.  It allows home buyers to quickly and easily zero in on a specific neighborhood where they would like to live.  This is important to people who are concerned with being close to a good school, close to their place of work or who want to move near friends because they live in a great neighborhood with lots of good people and families. 

Here is the list of mls search terms that include the word "map" from our web logs at MLSmaps.com.  We've higlighted a few of them to show you the actual Google SERP;