Karen- This is a great question to ask and the answer is very important. 

The links are indeed followed. 

If you don't know what Karen is talking about, you should read this post, Are Your Listings Helping Or Hurting Your Google Ranking. 

Eva- Coldwell Banker is regularly sending us a listing feed, so your listings should automatically be there.  Are they not?  Make sure you register with the same email address as CB has on file for you.  If there is an issue an your listings aren't there, send me a note at repros@zillow.com and I"ll research for you.

Toby and John - We are actually in the processing of working with Douglas Elliman right now.  I tried to look up some of your listings, but I didn't see addresses on anything, so I am going to have to give you the generic answer.  Email me if you want to talk specifics for you. The answer is that it totally depends on your broker.  If you work for someone that sends all leads to an email team, usually just the broker information is displayed.  If you (an agent) were to manually upload your listings, you would override this.  If you work for a broker that typically sends all leads to the listing agent, your information should already be there.  Then if you create this free profile, then your photo and a link to your profile will also show up (if you use the same email address).  So the answer depends on the structure of your brokerage. 

Mike- Good question, as that language is a bit specific to Zillow.  Yes, it is a photo.  But it also any other 'breadcrumbs' you may leave on the site, such participating in a discussion thread or adding some neighborhood photos.  We give you attribute by way of a link back to your profile whenever you leave a contribution.  Sort of like leaving a comment here in on AR.  We are getting about 25,000 contributions a day! 

Stephen-  When someone says they serve a city, we make sure that they're found by zip code search.  Best practice is to pick the largest geographic area you truly serve and we'll take care of the rest.  If you specialize in a neighborhood or ZIP, include that too.  This information goes in the same place on the Edit Profile page as where you handle ZIP.

Karen- I think there are a lot of people that would like someone to do that... we are working on it!  If nothing else, new entrants in the online real estate space have at least made them pay more attention to what is going on and do things like give all listing 4 free photos now (on zillow you get 50). 

With regards to your fear, I think it is warranted for site that just has listings as content.  Zillow was getting about 4 million people the site each month before we had a single for sale listing on the site.  Listings definitely enhance the site today however, but we hope that you are getting something out of too by way of leads and marketing exposure. 

Charging people to add functionality is not the way to build a site in today's online world.  If you charge people for these types of extras, obviously not everyone is going to do it, so your site is less compelling for people to visit (because there are much more complete sites on the web, like any site that has idx). And charging for leads is model that doesn't work (I don't think anyone has been able to successfully do this).  So I wouldn't worry about this too much, although I understand where you are coming from.

Georgina - First try this- log on to the site using the email address you are trying to change it to and click the 'forgot password'.  See if this emails you the password, if it does you are good to go.  If it doesn't, please email me the specifics of what you are trying to do at repros@zillow.com.