Many of you probably are already in the know that Realtor.com is still the 900 pound gorilla in the marketplace.  Yes sites like Trulia, Zillow and even the national ad campaign started by Dave Liniger from RE/MAX has his sight - Remax.com - in third position.  But everyone pales in comparison to Realtor.com.  So love 'em or hate 'em they get the traffic.

That being said most listings - 98% - that are part of the nations MLS systems - make their way onto Realtor.com without you having to lift a finger.  Realtor.com simply scrapes the data from these MLS systems and then displays them on their site.

Here's where it gets interesting.  If you don't do anything else - and unless your brokerage company has a blanket agreement with Realtor.com - your listing will have just a single photo and the bare bones information about the listing with no additional details.  You can't change this fact - UNLESS - you decide to pay the Realtor.com fees for what is called Showcase Status.  This fee varies greatly and is dependant upon your previous year's listing count.  But once you do get this "Status" your listing now can have additional photos and addtional discription (among a few other things as well).

Ever more interesting yet is the way Realtor.com just made some significant changes to their system - in particular in the way that listings are displayed for search results.  It used to be that as a buyer you would select a city, select a price range and then you would say whether or not you wanted to see listings with multiple photos or virtual tours (more on that later).  Now however that decision has been taken away and the results are quite surprising.  The properties that are displayed first are all either Showcase Status or properties with Virtual Tours.  This is significant because let's say you have a listing priced at $335k and you do not have a virtual tour or Showcase Status and let's say a buyer on Realtor.com does a search between $300-$350.  They are going to see all the listings all the way up to $350 that are first either Showcase or have a virtual tour first before your listing is ever displayed.  Try this out and see for yourself.

Now the fact that a virtual tour can get you back within the initial search results is a great advantage and it also allows you to begin to interact with those buyers that are on Realtor.com.  This is significant because so many buyers are online and they start their searching nationally but focus down locally and if they come across virtual tours for your listings - while they may not want to buy THAT listing - they may want to see what there is available on a local level. 

That's the power avaible with Virtual Tours and a great example of this is our company ListingsMagic's tours.  This is a shameless plug and I am unapologetic about this because I know the power that our tours are providing to agents who are interested in getting to those online buyers and trying to establish that oh so important ciritical first contact.  Take a look to see more at www.listingsmagic.com or visit a tour to see how we work to establish that relationship by redirecting those online buyers back to an agent's personal website - www.listingsmagic.com/2110.  It's also easy and cost effective.

Thanks for listening and think locally.