We have a few. Check out:

A Difference of Six Words: http://www.matthewferrara.com/marketing/sixwords

and

Radically Rethinking Real Estate Leads Management
http://www.matthewferrara.com/blog/management/qualifiedleads

Again, don’t make more of this post than what it is — simply a debate about “distributed traffic” vs. “single site traffic”.

Your point is on-target, I think, and deserves its own discussion: lead management once it comes in. Do you have a post up discussing this issue specifically?

-rsh

BTW, I want to make CLEAR that I am NOT knocking Zillow here. You guys have done and continue to do an amazing job. Folks who think I’m knocking your value or valuation are missing the point. That I think I wouldn’t have celebrated coming in 4th doesn’t mean Zillow suxxorz or some such. I thought I made that clear in the post, but it bears repeating.

This whole post is to continue our argument/debate about considering “distributed traffic” vs. “Zillow traffic”. My view remains that traffic to Zillow is also “distributed traffic” — because consumers search a narrow geographic area, neither all of California nor all of the United States.

If you get 10m visitors a month, and you have (let’s say) 5m outbound clicks, well, that’s kinda huge. I’d suggest trying to compile at least some data on that.

-rsh

That’s why I content that Sally Simple who simply calls and emails the FSBOs online and keeps up with a few old friends on Facebook will likely have a better “ratio” of success than Larry Lotsaleads who has twenty domains, an IDX page or two, and even an enhanced profile on the big guys’ sites. In the end, traffic does not equal commissions. It’s still a matter of sales. And that’s the “secret” problem of the industry.

You had me when you called me lovely. You lost me when you started doing algebra (I am sometimes blonde you know). So I’ll leave the commenting to the self-appointed data geeks like Eric. Haha!

Personally, I don’t care where my buyers search online. If they’re not familiar with the area or don’t already know an agent in my area than they’ll come across my website after a few searches and if I don’t capture them than I didn’t do my job. I’m certainly not worried about an agent from Zillow Realty to steal them away, I’m actually more worried about them being on Realtor.com than Zillow or Trulia which make the NAR take note that they’re biting the hand that feeds them. I say embrace all the great technology that’s out there. Today’s home buyers are strong and independent and like to do some of the work themselves. So embrace this and encourage them to use Dwellicious (which allows them to bookmarks homes for sale including FSBO’s from Realtor, Trulia, Zillow, etc.) and offer them feedback on the homes that they show interest in.

Posting that kitten was a real shrewd way to win some support here

I stand by my original feedback; you are muddling apples with oranges. Web traffic in Real Estate is INCREDIBLY broadly distributed. You cannot learn anything by considering the aggregate traffic to agent and broker sites.

And Zillow is certainly a tool for driving traffic to those sites.

When you purchase showcase ads you’ll see that we do in fact project the page view inventory available. What we cannot do is forecast clicks / referrals because the performance of ads varies greatly depending on their copy.

-rsh

I guess I’d say, don’t make more of this post than it is — an attempt to extend the discussion from Twitter.

As I was telling someone last night on IM, not every one of my post is particularly deep thinking, heh.

Also, your point is valid — and I said, IF Zillow sends a huge amount of traffic to broker/agent sites, then that completely changes the analysis.

-rsh

But Drew you know me, I’m a data fiend. I just have a hunch that a lot of traffic leaves your site to go to brokers and I think that should be put out there…