internet: Free IDX Search Tools (feedback request)
- 05/27/08 10:07 AM
We're reviewing the usability of a free generic version of our IDX search tools located at www.nwrealty.com/washington prior to official release later this week. Due to the increase of Buyers seeking owner terms we've included easy access to listings that offer "Lease/Purchase" and "Owner Financing" options. These are provided via buttons at the top right and how we should display results is where I would appreciate your input. Right now the results are limited to 200 listings which are currently sorted by list price (high to low). About half of the available listings are in excess of $1 million. Since few Buyers are interested in this high price … (0 comments)
internet: Washington top performing real estate markets Dec 07 - Jan 08
- 01/12/08 05:48 AM
This report represents our mid-January update compared with numbers from our mid-December update of our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State. These are the markets where we feature the most listings and rankings are impacted by where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top Ten Washington Counties ...Buyer attention continues to returned to the Seattle Metro, of Pierce, Snohomish and King County urban areas. We'll update this again in February. When winter gets you down just remember that Catchers and Pitchers (baseball) report just after Valentine's Day. … (1 comments)
internet: Washington top performing real estate markets
- 12/17/07 06:36 AM
This report represents our early December update compared with numbers from our late November update of our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State. These are the markets where we feature the most listings and also where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top Ten Washington Counties ...Buyer attention continues to returned to the Seattle Metro, of Pierce, Snohomish and King County urban areas. We'll update this again in late-December. Merry Christmas everyone! … (2 comments)
internet: Real Estate eFlyer Complaints
- 12/04/07 04:25 AM
The NWMLS recently advised its members "be selective when sending out emails regarding your listings to other members and agents" noting numerous complaints from members receiving unwanted emails from other members regarding listings. Most complaints are from members receiving emails about listings out of their service area. An example of abuse is an agent from the Bellevue workingprimarily on the eastside of King County receiving eflyers abouta listing in Bremerton which is in Kitsap County. We frequently receive eflyers about Olympia properties while our immediate area is Edgewood and Puyallup real estate. Agents don't want these "junk" eflyers especially for distant listings. The NWMLS emphasized that our registered email … (17 comments)
internet: Washington real estate top performing markets (Late-Nov 07)
- 11/29/07 01:00 PM
I'm back on schedule for our bi-monthly market updates. This represents our November end of month update compared with numbers from our mid month update of our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State. It indicates the markets where we feature the most listings and also where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top Ten Washington Counties ...Buyer attention returned to the Seattle Metro areas of Pierce, Snohomish and King County. I plan to update this again in mid-December. … (4 comments)
internet: Internet Connection Troubleshooting
- 11/25/07 08:59 AM
We commonly receive calls from customers having problems connecting to the web or email even though that is part of their ISP's support role (we're just easier to call). The usual symptoms are "connection" errors returned by Outlook or "cannot find" errors returned by Internet Explorer. Before navigating your ISP's support call center you may want to follow these steps ... Power down your PC, modem and router (if you have a network). Modems and routers usually have a 12 volt power adaptor that is easy to disconnect. Wait a few seconds and plug in the power to your modem. After a minute it should be reset and … (7 comments)
internet: Washington real estate top performing featured listings markets (Nov 07)
- 11/16/07 01:47 PM
I meant to update with this post about two weeks ago. This represent our November mid month update to previous posts regarding our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State. The lists below compares real estate activity from October 18th thru November 15th 2007. It indicates the markets where we feature the most listings and also where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top Ten Washington Counties ...Buyers made an unexpected showing for the Whidbey Island and Skagit Valley market areas of North Puget Sound, surpassing the more densly populated and higher demand Seattle Metro areas. These were some rather unexpected shifts in market activity. I'll try … (3 comments)
internet: Google Page Rank Finally Updated - What's your blog's PR?
- 10/30/07 08:20 AM
After six months Google has finally released the update of its "Page Rank (PR)" data. This is but one factor used to determine your website's position in search engine results. Since starting this blog in July of this year I've monitored numerous indicators of direct value to our Washington real estate website. I view this release of PR data more as a report card of how my blog building efforts have progressed. Google PR is rated on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 indicating very little value and 10 indicating the highest (only the big mega sites get above PR7). Here's … (29 comments)
internet: Washington real estate nwRealty top performing featured listings markets (Oct 07)
- 10/29/07 08:44 AM
This is our end of month update to a previous posts regarding our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State for our web site at www.nwrealty.com. The lists below compares real estate activity for the months of September and October 2007. This indicates the markets where we feature the most listings and also where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top Ten Washington Counties ... We'll update this list again in about two weeks. … (1 comments)
internet: Washington real estate top markets for featured listings (Sept 07)
- 10/01/07 11:12 AM
This is our end of month update to a previous post regarding our highest demand real estate markets in Washington State for our web site at www.nwrealty.com. After adding new Washington agents and brokers to our network, our number of feature real estate listings has increased to over 500 residential, condo and vacant land listings. We're wrapping up the beta test phase and will soon begin archiving results in our database. The lists below represents real estate activity for the first and second halves of the month of September 2007. This indicates the markets where we feature the most listings and also where the most buyers are currently looking for on-line real estate information. Top … (6 comments)
internet: MSN / Live Search Guidelines for successful indexing
- 09/26/07 06:51 AM
In recent posts I've mentioned how MSN's new Live Search is gaining a greater share of total web searches ... apparently causing the recent loss of Yahoo's market share. This recent surge of growth prompted me to again look for their "webmaster guidelines" and this morning I found success at this rather long link. Although titled as "guidelines" they are presented as technical and content "recommendations" along with some practices to avoid. A very very brief summary follows, please refer to the above link for details. MSN Tech recommendations (summary): only well-formed HTML codeno broken linksallow MSNBot to crawl your site/control with robots.txtKeep URLs simple and static. (THIS IS THE … (7 comments)
internet: Has Google Started Dancing?
- 09/24/07 07:18 AM
Over the past several days I've noticed some dramatic changes in Google's search engine results. Some old reliable "Washington Real Estate" place holder sites seem to have dropped into oblivion and others are bouncing in and out of the first page results. This is typically referred to as the "Google Dance" and continues for a frustrating and undisclosed duration. Are you noticing changes to your search positions? Also ... Last week I noticed a rather odd event with Yahoo's page saturation numbers (the pages they've indexed from a web site). The number of indexed pages dropped about 90% for every Washington real estate site that … (8 comments)
internet: nwRealty - top markets for featured Washington real estate listings
- 09/18/07 09:04 AM
We're adding new Washington agents and brokers to our network and increasing the number of feature real estate listings from about 300 to just over 500 listings. We're still in the beta testing stage and not yet storing results in our database. The list below represents real estate activity for the last two weeks and indicates markets where we have a surplus of exposure ... although it is influenced by the number of current buyers looking on-line for real estate information. I'll update this list again at the end of the month.
… (0 comments)
internet: Encourage your associates to author profiles
- 09/14/07 10:39 AM
As a matter of routine, I compose a press release for every new member of our real estate network. Just like blogging, this takes time and discipline. If you recall, the standard format for a press release include sections about the respective parties in the announcement. I was quite frustrated that I couldn't find profiles anywhere (not websites, NWMLS ... nadda) for several agents who I felt were entitled to the publicity and SEO benefit provided by an on-line press release. Although I'm sure that each agent is worthy of their individual press release, I had nothing to work with ... including time to wait … (2 comments)
internet: Listing eFlyer "SpamVertising" (new word for your vocabulary)
- 09/14/07 10:04 AM
Recently some new companies have begun distributing Listing Flyers by email. While claiming their email advertisements are not SPAM, they quickly site compliance with ... "USC 1618 Title III by the 105 US Congress, Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)" This law passed after corporate lobbyists made sure it is OK to send Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) when you have a "pre-existing relationship" with the recipients. These company's terms of service are packed so full of disclaimers that they resemble "limited service marketing agreements". But the real clue is they "DO NOT" send to email addresses with the major ISP's ... AOL, MSN, Hotmail, COX, Compuserve, etc. They … (16 comments)
internet: No Time Off for Spammers & Spoofers
- 09/04/07 05:42 AM
I monitored more online Buyer inquiries than expected this Labor Day weekend but they were mixed with a new surge of online spam. The Bank Of America ID thieves are back at it again, sending generic authentic looking messages that prompt you to update account information. Spammers are also submitting their junk links and messages via various web-forms that are intended for legitimate Buyer and Seller inquiries. Use of these forms bypasses anti-spam software at the ISP, Hosting Facility and Local levels. I found myself in the "Delete" mode and nearly removed a couple of bona-fide Buyer inquiries and had to remind myself … (7 comments)
internet: Google & Yahoo won't wait for "Emergency Maintenance"
- 09/01/07 06:09 AM
If you own a website it is inevitable that sooner or later you will receive notice from your tech provider that they are conducting "Emergency Maintenance". This is caused by an infinite number of things ... software upgrades/patches, router upgrades, hardware failure, etc. These notices will always minimize the impact of your "down time" but even a few minutes can be too much for your search engine rankings. Google and Yahoo don't announce when they will "crawl" and index your website. If your site is unavailable to them for any reason, you've simply missed out. The bad news is that Google appears to be … (3 comments)
internet: How many sites do I need?
- 09/01/07 05:48 AM
We have many broker/REALTOR customers with numerous blogs and websites in addition to the sites that we manage for them. Every once in a while I'll catch some little detail (photo, phone, email, etc.) that needs correcting ... and when I call/email them, they share how difficult it is for them to maintain every presence on the web that they have acquired. I personally believe that you can't have too many web sites ... unless things are starting to slip by and go undone. In this circumstance you should consider either (1) scaling back and de-cluttering your life or (2) hire an assistant to take … (30 comments)
internet: Where's Googlebot?
- 08/30/07 04:27 AM
For the past couple of weeks it has become obvious that Google has dramatically slowed the frequency that it is crawling our sites. But I haven't notices any real cause for alarm ... search rankings, saturation and link popularity are all holding or improving. This isn't limited to our main site at www.nwrealty.com. I've noticed this on all sites that we manage ... about 40 NWMLS broker sites and 65 agent sites for Washington licensees and another 10 or so sites for attornies, escrow, finance, etc. Please comment if you've noticed anything similar.
… (11 comments)
internet: "AR Sponsors" - who's advertising
- 08/29/07 03:06 PM
I've seen several text and banner ads on Activerain and I've grown curious ... how it is working out for the Sponsors? How are you tracking results ... click throughs or tracking URL's? Is it effectively reaching your target audience? Making your phone ring? Making your email chime? Or, am I jumping the gun and asking these questions a little too soon? I appreciate any comments you care to share. Thanks! … (11 comments)
Keeping the fingers of Buyers, Sellers and REALTORS on the Pulse of Puget Sound Real Estate and their eyes on the little details of the big picture in Washington.
We're reviewing the usability of a free generic version of our IDX search tools located at www.nwrealty.com/washington prior to official release later this week. Due to the increase of Buyers seeking owner terms we've included easy access to listings that offer "Lease/Purchase" and "Owner Financing" options. These are provided via buttons at the top right and how we should display results is where I would appreciate your input.;)
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