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Zillow - From A to our Favorite Letter, Z! 26 Ways to Use Zillow, Plus Free Marketing Tools.

Yes, Zillow is mostly known for Zestimates, but in the three and a half years since we launched, we have evolved into so much more. Here are 26 highlights -- from A to Z -- including some training resources and videos.

A – Advice. Market your expertise in our real estate forum where consumers and professionals connect. Receive e-mail alerts when questions are asked in your area. Watch this video about Zillow Advice.

B – Badges. People who are the most helpful in the Zillow Community are rewarded with better placement throughout the site and are given Zillow All-Star and Zillow Local Expert badges. These can also be added to your blog or Web site.

C – Comps. Learn how to find comps on Zillow by watching this video.

D – Duplicate listing data. When we receive listing data from multiple sources, whose information do we use? Learn how Zillow uses trumping order when receiving a listing from multiple sources.

E – E-mail updates from Zillow. We send all kinds of e-mails that can benefit you, including corporate updates, saved listing searches, updates about a home that may not even be on the market, and interest rate alerts. Learn more how to customize the information you recieve from Zillow and sign up for free Zillow e-mail today.

F – Free ways to market yourself on Zillow (video).

G – Get instant and anonymous loan quotes in our Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. Great place to check current rates and help your clients get started in shopping for financing. Learn how Zillow Mortgage Marketplace works.

H – Homeowners can claim and edit their homes on Zillow. See how you can claim your home and edit your home's facts on Zillow. (More than a million people have done it!)

I – iPhone. Over 650,000 downloads in the first 3 months have made this the No. 1 mobile real estate application. If your listings are on Zillow, you are mobile too! Watch a quick video about Zillow's iPhone App and download this wildly popular app.

J – Just for fun, Dueling Digs! Get home remodeling and decorating ideas or vote on your favorite home designs. Warning, this can be addictive!

K – Kool widgets. Tons of fun widgets you can download for free to get interesting real estate content for your website or blog. Select from this list of Zillow widgets and watch this video why you should add Zillow content to your site (remember: content is king).

L – Listings. Post yours -- for free! Find out how to add your listings on Zillow.

M – Make Me Move. This is an interesting group of homeowners who haven’t decided to go actively on the market yet, but have assigned a value of what it would take to make them move. Learn how to approach someone with a Make Me Move house (video).

N – New! Local Pages. We compiled all the data from the site onto these pages and localized it. Learn about the overhaul to our Real Estate Market Reports. Here is a great example of how to implement Zillow data on a local level.

O – Overview of Zillow. Yes, you're reading the overview, but here is a video overview of Zillow.

P – Professional Directory. Add yourself to the Zillow Professional Directory -- for free. Just create a profile and click a box in the setup to be included.

Q – Quotes. Find out what type of interest rates are being quoted right now in the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

R – Reports on Housing Trends. Spot housing trends from the customizable, local housing data that is carved out of the 90 million homes we have online. Better yet, just go to your Local Pages on Zillow.

S – Showcase Ads. Want your home or brand to appear every time someone searches in a certain ZIP code? If so, Showcase Ads are for you. Learn about Showcase Ads and how much your ZIP code costs.

T – Three, free ways to market yourself on Zillow. (video)

U – Update your free profile on Zillow. It is important for the information to be complete as it can affect your response from Zillow users and search engines like Google. Watch this video to learn how to Create a great Zillow profile.

V – Videos! Learn more about the Zillow folks you see here regularly on ActiveRain, including Sara Bonert, Spencer Rascoff and David Gibbons. Add a video of yourself on your Zillow profile. It can be of yourself, or a listing. Change them out!

W – Why should a broker send a listing feed to Zillow? (video)

X – X marks the spot. But why is that spot wrong on the map? Learn how to edit a home’s location on Zillow.

Y – YOU! Learn how to become a Zillow All-Star or Local Expert and show up higher in Zillow Directory search results.

Z – Zestimates. What else would we end with, but a video on how the Zestimates work and how to best describe them to your clients.

Thanks for making it all the way to Z! If there's anything you need help with, don't be afraid to ask.

Signed,

Sara with an S!

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Posted by Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} on 07/30/2009 04:54 PM

Comments (24)

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24 Comments on Zillow - From A to our Favorite Letter, Z! 26 Ways to Use Zillow, Plus Free Marketing Tools.

JUL

2009

Wow! I have been adding information on Zillow to my listings and using it as much as I knew about, but I wasn't aware of all this stuff...go Zillow!

Thanks for the post!

What a comprehensive site and soooo full of information! Thank you, Sara, for preparing this and sharing it. I have bookmarked it to come back as I progress from Advice to Zestimates!

JUL

2009

Hey Hey! There's some good stuff here. I'm going there (Zillow) right now.

I put my listings on zillow but had read so much negativity about agents claiming other agents listings and comments from sellers that hurt the sale... that I wasn't sure that I wanted to get more involved in the site.

Wow, thanks for the info. We are going to start incorporating some of this into our marketing. I love the Make Me Move....

Sorry, but I've stayed away from Zillow because your zestimates are so off from real market selling values. I may reconsider...but the zestimates are just a deal killer for me...and for my clients...

Dear arthurfang- Thanks so much for the jimmy choo link! Unfortunately it is a bit of a down market for me right now, so I am sticking with old navy flip flops. But thanks for adding relevant content to the post. Off to report you as a spammer now!

Judi - Only the the listing agent/broker or home owner can post a property as being for sale. If you ever see a listing ownership err on the site, I would encourage you to click the flag button on it to describe the problem. This triggers an email to our customer service to correct it.

Josh- Yes, the Make Me Moves is such a unique data set. We have about 150,000 of them on the site right now.

Bob- Are you saying you wouldn't advertise a listing on the site because of the Zestimate? Because a wrong Zestimate would be even more reason to post it for sale. Info you would provide could correct it and cause it to be recalculated (say we had bedroom count wrong). Also, when we know the For Sale price, we replace it with the Zestimate on the search and map page and at the top of the prop. page, and push the Zestimate down below the fold. I would encourage you to watch the Zestimate video I linked to above, to get the full picture.

For technical reasons, this post got split in two. If you would like to see comments from the other post (same content, different comments). Please visit this link.

I must say I really used to be a fan of Zillow, but my love has faded over the years and it's become so commercialized. At one point in the past I could look at any property, get the Zestimate, see past sales, see property taxes, and other details on the property.

Well now, I get the feeling Zillow has sold it's soul to the advertising monsters. Can't get to a single page without being innundated with ads. I'm sure the founders demand their profits and all, but when I visit Zillow now, and it's a house for sale, it would seem that most of the info disappears into oblivion in favor of giant realtor advertisements, etc.

I'm not fond of the path Zillow has taken really and as a result I use it far less these days.

Zillow has the trumping order in a way that makes sense. Very different from your competition and this is the way I want it.

Here's my beef with the zestimates

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1008018/zillow-and-the-internet-

I don't believe that putting a listing on Zillow will do anything to change the zestimates. That's because there is a formula that is used to come up with the figures (as I understand it).

I have to work with real numbers in a real time situation. Numbers based on a formula that crank out such ridiculous values like in my parents neighborhood simply don't do sellers a bit of good.

I'd really love to see Zillow change how they do the zestimates. I think that would give you folks way more credibility.

Just my thoughts.

I'm sorry but the comps on Zillow are totally inaccurate and when customers call and say "well on Zillow it says this" I have to explain that Zillow's estimates are terribly off base. I'm not willing to advertise Zillow via widgets on my website so clients can leave my site and possible land on some other real estate agent's site via Zillow. What is the benefit in that for me?

Thanks for the information! I went to Zillow immediately and started answering advice questions!

Hey Liane- So people are calling saying they were on Zillow, first this should tell you that there is a huge consumer audience there that you should be capitalizing on (and it is free, unless you want to do more).

Then with regards to the inaccuracies. Please watch the Zestimate video I linked to in the post. It will help you when your clients call and say 'but zillow says..' We have all our accuracy tables posted on the site. Instead of shooting down a site they obviously love to look at, you can respond with facts and say 'zillow is just a starting point, in fact they admit their median err rate is X% and they are only within 5% of the selling price X% of times. The video walks thru where to get this info.

With regards to widgets. People are going to Zillow for all the information that the widgets are displaying today. Now say they go to your site and are able to get that same information. Then don't have to come to ours to get it. Widgets (no matter where they come from) make your site more content rich. True there is a link out to Zillow on the widget, but consumer doesn't have to click on that to get the info. I am not 100% sure, but I think the click thru off rate on those back to Zillow is around 5% (don't quote me on that). Widget are a great, free way to have fresh, relevant and even fun content on your site/blog.

Mark- Thanks for leaving that comment. Everyone has an opinion on how the trumping order should be. I am glad you like it as is. I do too.

Bob- I checked out your link and commented on your post.

Betty- Yeah! Make sure to sign up to recieve email alerts when there is a question in your area. Then you won't have to keep coming back and manually checking.

"Because a wrong Zestimate would be even more reason to post it for sale. Info you would provide could correct it and cause it to be recalculated (say we had bedroom count wrong). Also, when we know the For Sale price, we replace it with the Zestimate on the search and map page and at the top of the prop. page, and push the Zestimate down below the fold. I would encourage you to watch the Zestimate video I linked to above, to get the full picture."

When you know the "For Sale Price" you replace it (the for sale price?) with the Zestiamte - so you are putting hte zestimate in place of the for sale price? Why would you do that? A "for sale" price is not a sold comp. This makes no sense to me.

AUG

2009

I hear much less about Zillow from clients these days than I do Redfin. That seems to be where most buyers head. I can't blame them, the property search there is better than our mls. I used to look at Zillow for comps occassionally but I find the process truly cumbersome there. I'll sign up to answer questions though. I do that on Trulia occasionally, though I've yet to pick up any business from it.

AUG

2009

Judi- Let me clarify. When an agent tells us a home is for sale, this is when the replacement on the map and search page happens. When the agent tells us the home is no longer for sale, the list price goes away and the Zestimate is restored to the top of the property page.

Jenny- Our traffic is up 60-70% year over over, so I am surprised to see that you are hearing about it less? We are at about 8.5 million people using the site each month.

AUG

2009

I've enjoyed reading the comments about the post. I typically will look at the Zestimate when I go on a listing appointment; as I know my potential sellers have already checked it out. I didn't realize the information about the accuracy tables, very helpful to know this info.

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Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing}

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