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Add millions of listings to your website and blog

We are very pleased to announce the beta release of our new RealBird Property Search tool covering the whole U.S with millions of for sale and for rent properties, foreclosures and FSBOs.

This property search tool is using Google's vast database of syndicated listings (Google Base), and designed to be private labeled for real estate professionals, branded with your contact info, logo or photo and all leads go to you.. The RealBird Property Search is one of the largest and fastest real estate search engines out there. It was designed from the ground up to be lightning fast and customizable by you in order to provide your visitors and clients an outstanding user experience.

We'll be posting more case studies and feature descriptions, but in this first post, let me emphasize one of the key features:

The service allows you to set up preset searches and generate widgets for those to be added to your website or blog, or emailed to clients. Loaded with features: mapped properties, street view, embedded Google Earth, social bookmarking and sharing, and your visitors can create accounts for their property searches, where they can save searches and favorite listings. Your blog and Twitter updates are also streamed into their account. The search tool can be embedded anywhere with customizeable width/height or sidebar widgets. The value proposition is similar to IDX searches, but rather than relying on MLS feeds, - for the first time -, you can provide access to FSBO, foreclosure and other type of listings as well. Just like with IDX searches, all inquiries are forwarded to you. It's your own home search portal.

To get your own private labeled version, login to RealBird and follow the simple steps on the landing page or register for free here.

To demonstrate the capabilities, please see a live version from the Brenda Magness, Brenda Blaser & Pam Yoakum Realty Group. They were the first to deploy it on their ActiveRain site (both as a sidebar widget and embedded in a post)

The example below shows a preset search module for Luxury Keller, TX Homes (Keller, TX +15mi - Single Family Homes - $2M+). It is a live embed, you can interact with it.

Get your own, private labeled RealBird Property Search engine on RealBird.com

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

Posted by Real Bird on 04/16/2009 05:04 PM

Comments (38)

Real Estate Search Engine in the Technology and Tools Channel

google maps api, google street view, google base, realbird, realbird property search, google earth, real estate search

Originally posted at: RealBird Blog: Add millions of listings to your website and blog

Post is included in group: The Optimist
Post is included in group: Technology
Post is included in group: Tech Corner
Post is included in group: Real Estate Technology
Post is included in group: Free Tools For Real Estate Agents

38 Comments on Add millions of listings to your website and blog

APR

This sounds interesting Real Bird. I will make sure to check this out.

Realbird! I dug you guys before. Now you're officially bomb diggity.

A little love for ya over here from a few days ago...

And will be integrating you fully into the HeyCentralPa.Com! (Dwellicious will still be featured, but you guys will fully legitimize my bid for an idx-free site...)

Mike - I saw you signed up. Great. Let us know if you need help with the service.

Ryan - I just watched your screencast of us. It's amazing ! Thanks a lot.

Regarding the Property Search engine, let us know if we can help in any ways. We'll be posting more case studies and best practices soon.

Z - Thanks for your email earlier today. I just got a chance to take a look now. I like it although I think it could be improved upon. The listings are not presented in any order? Are you required to give the listing brokers contact information. I would imagine many that use the tool could end up contacting the listing broker instead. These are my initial thoughts.

Thanks Bill - Good questions:

Sorting: There is a drop down above the search results on the right which enables users to select sorting by "Recent", "Price" - ascending and descending, "Bed", "Bath" and "Year Built" The default sorting of matching properties is by date ("Recent") which is the modification date as defined by the Google API (list date for new and modification date for existing, but updated listings). The RSS feed of a specific search always returns listings sorted by "modification date" - to act as a notification mechanism for new or updated matches.

Regarding the listing broker information: While we do not have any constraints set by the Google Base terms, we decided to show it to reflect similarty with IDX searches. We did not want to make the call about this, so we will most likely add an option so RealBird members can decide with a config option whether to show this piece of info on their version or not.

Keep the feedback coming !

Thanks

-- Zoltan

Sounds interesting -- will check it out -- all the best.

Hey there Real Bird, this is a real good thing you've got going on ~ I have joined but just need to get my listings over there. Thanks for the post.

APR

Thanks Bob & Carolin - Let us know what you think.

Sandy - Thanks for the reblog!

If there are no constraints on your end I am sure most would not want the listing agents info to be seen:)

Will make the change. Optional, default to not showing it. Thanks Bill for taking the time to send us your feedback.

-- Zoltan

Real Bird- This is a great new tool. I like the way you can embed the widget and the search tool. I am with Bill on not wanting to advertise for other listing agents. Although we have plenty of our own listings still in all, I don't want to lose someone who calls someone else but sees the listing on our site. Thanks for adding the option. Katerina

Nestor & Katerina - Glad you like it !

We'll add this option during the weekend. Your feedback is very valuable. Thanks

-- Zoltan

the link wouldn't copy for me, I'm sure its something I'm doing wrong as I don't understand all of this tech stuff.

Hi Ann, Where did you try to copy it to? We are here to help !

-- Zoltan

Looks great! I have an account and will be checking it out!

Sounds good. Let us know when you have it deployed

-- Zoltan

Hey, I have a question too. Is there anyway to have this feed on the agent's website, or does it have to be a link off of theirs and onto the realbird website? Could we do some kind of sub-domain that points to the search somehow?

It's not going to be a good thing if people put the search link into their navigation and it goes off to your website instead. What can you offer instead?

Jan

Jan - Good question.

The service is fully branded to you, we just have a "Powered by RealBird" logo in the footer. All inquiries (More info request) and client registrations go to you. We are just the service provider, we do not want home buyer inquiries :)

There are a few different options: you can embed the fully functional search engine, just like we did with the live site above in our post. In the RealBird member area, you can copy the proper code and paste it into your AR blog post (or other website's page) in HTML mode (this is important - you have to switch the editor to the HTML view)

You can also take a sidebar widget (thin design which fits into the sidebar of AR or other blogs) and copy the appropriate iframe code (again, from the RealBird member area) into your web editor. In case of ActiveRain, it is "My Home>Settings>Blog description"

Finally, you can use regular links on your website or blog, that opens up a full screen version of this service. Even in that case, it is always your branded service, which directs all client communication to you.

-- Zoltan

APR

Just fixed a bug. Now correctly showing properties with 8-digits price tag :)

See for example this 7br 10 ba beauty

Zoltan OMGosh I've been playing with the new listing search a bit: like having a choice of sizes (full screen is my fave) & good color selection. The ability to add links and other html is another HOT feature, can't wait to get time to explore and embed it but so far I think I Love this! thanks =D RealBird Rocks!

I tried it on my website and love it, thank you, thak you!! one glitch I noticed, when searching a price range, I found the same listings come up 4 or 5 times in a row. I am guessing this is because they were submitted to several portals, and your program picked them up from each one? John

Tina - Thanks. Let me know when you have it deployed. The search configurator is obsessive. I find myself playing with it. Setting up niche searches, sharing interesting properties on social bookmarking sites .

John - We are glad to hear you like the service and you are right, we noticed some duplicates as well, it is indeed due to the fact that some listings are syndicated by multiple sources. We'll work on it to try to figure out how to remove duplicates. It is tricky though as there is no one set of rules for such plus we will have to figure out which one to keep out of the duplicates. In your market, your MLS syndicates the active listings as well. You can set up a search if you want to where MLSPin is pre-set as a search keyword. This would eliminate the duplicates, but will also eliminate the non-MLS listings, such as FSBOs and pocket listings etc.

We are really pleased with all the inputs. Keep them coming !

APR

This sounds wonderful. I will bookmark this and try it later.

Thanks Gita

APR

You guys are awesome beyond belief!

Now featured on the Optimist Group.

Sorry! I need to put this back up on Saturday. It's LOL Friday on the Optimist Board (I've been going too fast and didn't realize it's Friday already).

APR

Thanks Mirela ! Any day to be featured is appreciated and thanks for the reblog as well.

Hi Real Bird. We just tried putting it into our Joomla site, but it appears that my Joomla site isn't happy with i-frames. Anything you guys can help us with? Would like to be able to integrate the search engine thingie into the site, so that it doesn't leave our website, instead of just providing a link.
I understand that it may be an operator error on our parts, but don't have the time or the patience to dig though code, so i figured i'd ask...

Inna - I found this thread about Joomla and iframe:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=326&t=299835

Most of the comments and back and forth Q&A, but some of them seems to be helpful:

http://winfoes.co.uk/dldocs/JoomIframe.pdf PDF file describing some ways to deal with iframe in Joomla

Many of the commenters also refer to a Joomla plugin called MosiFrame which seems to allow you to add iframe with ease. http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/4144/details

I personally never used Joomla, but the comments seem to indicate that Mosiframe plugin is the solution.

I hope this helps. If you suceeded, please make sure you let us know here so that we can check out your RealBird Property Search deployment.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

Zoltan, thanks a million. will try the extension and see what happens. Darn the love-hate relationship with Open Source - sometimes it's a lonely world:-)
Will update any other geeks Joomla users if successful.

Inna - Let us know if it worked.

MAY

This is pretty cool stuff. I need to head over to real bird and check it out, thanks!!

MAY

I am glad you like it. Check it out and don't hesitate to contact us with questions and feedback.

-- Zoltan

MAY

It worked for me. Thanks a bunch for the tip.

One question I have: how do we post these links on our Facebook page? I have not been successful in doing this.

Anja - Glad it worked. Facebook support is coming with the next version.

In the meantime, please check out these tutorials to get the most out of the service.

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com

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