Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 26th June 2008
Google to expose property portal stats
Exaggeration has always been a popular media sales tool. As any self-respecting sales person will tell you, it comes in especially handy when the product you’re selling is crap!
A minority of the weaker property portals have been guilty of this practice in the past, but the good news for agents is that their days are numbered. When launched, Google’s new
Ad Planner tool will make web traffic statistics freely available to small businesses across the globe. Overseas agents and developers stand to benefit as Google’s figures will provide a “currency” for comparing property portals which should help you maximise your return on marketing investment.
Users will be able to compare top line unique user and page view statistics of all websites across the internet (not just those on Google’s content network), as well as view traffic trends over time, and demographic information. The screenshot below provides a flavour of the kind of information that will be available:
Targeting wealthy consumers
Google AdCentre also has a
research tool that allows you to find websites where a disproportionate number of users come from high income groups, as well as other demographic criteria – invaluable for overseas property agents.
Another great feature is behavioural targeting. This can be used to find websites that have a similar audience to the property portals you already use, providing a quick way of sourcing new lead generation opportunities.
Good news for small business
If you have the budget, it’s possible to undertake similar comparative research now using services like
Hitwise,
comScore and
Nielsen Online. However, these services cost and have a much smaller data set than Google. A basic subscription to Hitwise costs in the region of £15,000 per year. Google’s move makes valuable competitive information available to small business and creates a more level playing field.
Problems with portal comparison
The Google data will only help agents compare “apples with apples” and to continue the analogy, there are many types of fruit in the overseas property portal market. The tool could easily tell you how two pure-play country-specific property sites like
InSpain.tv and
Kyero.com compare, but its insights will be less meaningful when comparing these sites with Rightmove.co.uk. From its data set (see below), Google will not be able to split out traffic by searched-for country. The tool will certainly help agents with their marketing planning but its not going to do it all for you.
The Google Black-box
Google is refusing to say exactly how it will generate the data. Its website says:
“Google Ad Planner combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users and powered by computer algorithms.”
SEO guru Danny Sullivan
questioned them further on this statement but Google refused to reveal any more details of their “secret sauce”.
The data will be no doubt be subtly self-serving and shrouded in mystery but its likely to be at least as reliable as the current paid-for competition. It will not only save agents and developers time, it will make property portal sales pitches much more transparent. Its launch can’t come soon enough.
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User Comments
Great Article Thank You!
Jeff,
NaN
At present Quantcast seems to do this better, and also for free, allowing site owners to feed directly-measured data through to them easily. The Quantcast analytics are nice, too.
Matthew Montagu-Pollock,
Global Property Guide