UPDATE - 10/4/11: Redfin actually just turned off these scouting reports, citing data inaccuracy concerns as the major issue. You can continue reading, but now the stuff discussed below is gone.

Unless you’ve been asleep this last week, you heard the news that Redfin released agent scouting reports that show sales history and statistics for 1+ million agents in the US, most of which are agents not affiliated with Redfin.

I’ll go on record and say that I do fundamentally like the concept. I always check up on boasts by the “neighborhood expert” to find out that they haven’t ever sold a home in the neighborhood or other such nonsense. I’m sure consumers would love to do this themselves. There are plenty of issues around data quality and accuracy of these reports being debated elsewhere, like here and here. Redfin should have solved these before such a broad launch of the functionality, but we’ll leave that debate to the other posts.

If you are an agent in one of the markets where this feature is available, I invite you to search your name in Google. You may be surprised to find that you suddenly have a profile on Redfin.com that bubbles up quite high on search results. Let’s pick an example. Nancy Gudino is a Century 21 agent in Chicago. Let’s pretend that we are a consumer who wants to search for her. Enter “Nancy Gudino Chicago” into Google and you get this:

Nancy is not a Redfin agent, and I’m guessing she views herself as their direct competitor, yet the #4 search result for her profile is a profile on Redfin.com that she did not consent to. Click on the link, and you land on a profile with links promoting Redfin agents.

Nancy is not alone. So far Google has indexed 163,000+ such profiles, and I’m sure more will find their way in as they are indexed. Some agents with a heavy internet presence may have these links buried under other results, but in many cases, Redfin is going to outrank your site and appear on the first page of Google.

Are agents OK with this? I’m certainly not, and they don’t even have scouting reports in our market in Seattle. Redfin has a strong authority on the search engines, and make no mistake, the reason for publishing everyone else's’ scouting report is to draw in more consumers to their website, not yours.

Cooperation with competitors is implied by agreeing to share listings via IDX. That cooperation does not mean that MLS members agree to give our competitors the ability to host a permanent agent profile on their site and to have it show up prominently on Google and Bing.

Redfin can wield their search engine authority as they wish, but not on the backs of unsuspecting competitors without their consent. These scouting reports should not appear on page 1, page 10 or page 1000 of Google without the consent of the agents whose history is being displayed.