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ActiveRain integrates with Google Base

Google base logo

We just finished implementing another way to help members of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network promote themselves and their businesses online. As of this morning we are now submitting profiles of members (real estate agents and brokers) into one of Google's newest services, Google Base (beta).

What is google base?

To quote Google, "Google Base is a place where you can post all types of content
and have it show up on Google." It's essentially a big searchable database of structured content. This content is then used to populate their various searches such as Google Maps, Froogle, and even their main search. When content is added to Google Base lots of attributes are attached. This make it much more useful from building searches results than data collected crawling a web page.

Lately in the real estate space, Google Base has gotten a lot of buzz as a place to promote real estate listings. But they also have a catagory for Real Estate - Services, which is where we started adding our members. We are also submitting blogs to their Blogs catagory. While Google Base is still relatively new and I can't tell you exactly where these submitted profiles will appear in their searches, we are helping our members get in at the ground floor of something that may be potentially huge. I'll write more on Google Base's potential in my personal blog tonight.

Screenshot of searching for real estate services in Seattle in Google Base:

-Matt Heaton (ActiveRain CEO)

Posted by ActiveRain Real Estate Network on 07/19/2006 08:02 AM

Comments (41)

activerain, activerain features, activerain updates, google, google base

41 Comments on ActiveRain integrates with Google Base

JUL

2006

You guys rock! That is so cool!

I sounds like there is great potential and uncharted territory ahead.

I am impressed. What a great service!

Matt sounds like you got my back Jack! Not sure what it does or why it does it but I am confident you do. So thanks.

Thanks for the extra exposure, should we mail you checks or do you prefer cash? :-)

Pump up the volume! Ok, active rain has officially changed the real estate industry forever.

Now this is too sweet! I hadn't read the blog yet today and found one of my blog entries on a vary competetive search term! I'm curious when you uploaded because my blog entry showed up on the search at 8:48 AM.

Thanks for all the hard work!

I want to mention that my activerain profile shows up as #4 now for some of my search terms. That is from #5 just two days ago.

Additionally, another search term of mine now shows my profile as #1 and moved my main website up to #2 (the links, I assume?)

Absolutely fantastic!

Great concept...looking forward to the results as we go forward!

When I wrote the post this morning the import of our profiles hadn't finished. When I search now on any city, our members come up above everyone else. We will be looking for lots of opportunities that arise in the future that allow us to promote our members throughout the Internet.

very good

Thanks for the heads up on this and let's hope we get the exposure too!

This is wonderful! Thanks!

Absolutely outstanding!

This is great promotion for us all! Thanks!

Matt, thanks for this! Also, a special thank you to Caleb. I was having some difficulties today and he made a personal call to me to help! What customer service. I noticed you guys are in my "backyard" Bellevue, do I get "extra" points 'cause I noticed!

Very cool! Thank you for helping us to stay ahead on the technology curve!

JUL

2006

Bummer! Our ActiveRain profile is #1 in Jacksonville, #1 in Duval County, even #1 in FL... holding steady at #5 on the network, but placed dead last in the Google thing. I guess we need to ratchet up "something". Lest you think I'm complaining, I'm not! Just having a little fun with ya.

Thanks for all you are doing Matt!

I have no idea how Google determines the ordering in the Real Estate - Services section. We don't have much control over it, we just submit the data in and Google does it magic behind the scenes.

Matt, I just had someone indicate that you are planning to start "charging" in September. Is there any truth to that?

No, there is absolutely no truth to that at all...

Didn't think so. I set the record straight.

Free advertising!! That's great!

This is absolutely fantastic!!!!!

JUL

2006

Hi Matt,

When I searched my area (Annapolis, Maryland) in the Google Base real estate services, the Google Map only placed a marker by one of the agents in this city. (And it wasn't me). There are three ActiveRain agents in Annapolis, and all showed up with the results, but only 1 was mapped. I've entered my office address on my profile page. Any idea why it wouldn't come up on the map?

Thanks for all your work and this new submission for ActiveRain agents.

Probably the reason it only showed one marker on the map is all three were in the same location. We were only able to push city, state as the location instead of a full address because google compained about so many of the addresses being invalid, even though they looked valid to me. It's one of those things to go on the list and try to get sorted out.

JUL

2006

Very cool. I can see how this will really increase exposure for the members. Do you think we could expand this to where we could geocode our posts or our profile? That way you can push that info, too.

Gotta love free advertizing. THANKS!

How do I get my name added?

JUL

2006

I love free advertising also!!

JUL

2006

How often are these uploads to Google Base performed / scheduled?

The way content is pushed into Google Base it's a fairly manual process right now. It takes about 5 minutes of time to do, so we'll do it every couple days. So if you are a new member and not showing up, it'll just take time.

AUG

2006

wow this is good to know

what about non agents and brokers? Anything coming up for them?

AUG

2006

Be interesting to see if it affects SE rankings for other sites as well.

AUG

2006

You mentioned that you are submitting them for brokers and realtors...

What about other members? like... home inspectors? :)

AUG

2006

Wow, this rocks. Did I say yet that I am very impressed so far.

NOV

2006

Exploring uncharted territory is what it's all about... or going where no man has gone before...

This is great, thank you!

NOV

2006

Hi Matt

Thank you so much for including us on the cutting edge of technology. You are amazing.

Thanks, Matt. We appreciate all the promotion. It's fun to see ourselves places. We'd never have time to do all this ourselves. I've set up a google alert on my name, and nearly every day I appear through ActiveRain (at least the days that I post).

SEP

2007

I notice this blog is a little old but this information is still very good. I had no Idea that Google Base had real estate on it. I found this all out yesterday. And it seems this site as been up since 2006 or so. Where have I been? Thanks for the info.

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