If anyone asked me I would say that the IDX is the most important feature of my real estate website. Most visitors go to a real estate website to look for property. Hopefully, you are familiar with an IDX. If not it stands for Internet Data Exchange. IDX gives MLS Participants the ability to display eash others' listings on their websites. It is what allows me to show virtually every listing in the Sarasota MLS.

Google analytics shows that most visitors to my website are looking at property. They stay on the property pages longer and see many of them. To really compete on the internet it is crucial to have a property search. 

Advantages to having an IDX:

• Makes your website sticky
• Visitors will come back to your site if you have a good IDX
• The fresh content and constant updates appeals to consumers and search engines
• Lead capture
• Users can save searches, receive automatic updates of properties and save properties.
• Educates consumers

I have to hand it to my web guys - www.realestatewebmasters.com for building great custom IDX's. My Sarasota MLS listings search allows consumers to search for properties by subdivision, condo building, map, MLS #, city, or zip code. Searches can use the advanced search where they stipulate property type, price range, bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, keywords, lot size and property age.

Below I added some photos of my property pages.

Above you can see multiple photos, address, price, MLS#, Realtor remarks, bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage and virtual tour link.

This is on the same page. It shows more information about the property.

Here you have the Bing overhead map with the location of the property as well as Google Streetmaps. Depending on the property location the Bing map will show up as the Birdeye image which is really cool.

I get calls from Realtors asking for advice on building a web presence. I tell them that a property search is very important. People visit a real estate site to look at property for sale. They look at other information as well but they are primarily there to see what is for sale. The competition is only going to get more stiff so if you don't have a good property search on your site you will lose visitors to those websites that do.