Do Zillow's New Agent Reviews Fall Short?

This week's big news here on Active Rain and in the online real estate space is that Zillow is now offering online Agent Reviews.

Sara Bonert from Zillow Made the announcement here:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1995488/zillow-launches-a-free-online-agent-endorsement-system

Here are the basics:

Consumers can write a review and have the opportunity to rate their agent from 1-5 stars in a number of categories. All the reviews are "vetted" before being posted (probably checking IP addresses etc) and agents are not allowed to review other agents. To write a review you must first set up a Zillow account.

As with all things Zillow, the confused masses are starting to complain - though quickly put in their place by the eloquent Jay Thompson.

Unfortunately, this feels to me like other Zillow initiatives, a great idea that isn't executed as well as I would have hoped for.

For me it comes down to two issues:

• How will good agents raise to the top on Zillow?

On every other consumer site that allows reviews it allows the consumer to search by quality. You can either read the best reviews first or you can start at the bottom. There's no sign that Zillow allows you to search this way.

Zillow has long given "top agents" two types of "badges" to promote themselves - Zillow All Stars and Zillow Local Experts. Do these new consumer ratings and reviews factor in to how these are earned? One would think so.

• Are Zillow's energies being focused here and not on existing known problems?

Zillow collects a massive amount of data on homes for sale, home values and home sales. In some areas that info is good and in some it is horrible. I think 1000 Watt took them to task quite well here. Just this week my brokerage switched syndication services from Ubadoo to Listhub which wreaked havoc on our companies listings on both Zillow and Trulia. It may not be Zillow's fault, but Zillow as a publisher has some responsibility to clean up the mess that sits on their site.

I have never been a fan of the All Stars and the Local Expert badges. It's common in the Leavenworth area where I work to see "local experts" who have never sold a single house in Leavenworthand who are not members of the local MLS - which means they don't have access to 90% of the homes on the market.  Some skeptic in me thinks that you probably haven't done business in all 300 zipcodes you list in your profile.

As with all things on the internet, I'm sure this is just the beginning of the story. I look forward to it developing and to see what Zillow brings us next.