Temecula Real Estate

You seem to be suffering from another misconception as to the structure of ODP real estate listings.

The listings are indexed by the location of the office, not the areas served. To index by areas served would require the editors to be real estate auditors, because they would have to verify your claims. Office locations can be verified with only a little effort.

Click to expand...

Thank you Aurthor for seeng what I was trying to "debate". No misconception at all. I do have a verifiable office address in four close by cities. I only wish to list in two of the cities in which I have offices, Temecula and Hemet. If you will read from the beginning, you will see you made the exact point I was trying to bring to the table all along. The guidlines in their current state, only allow for one listing, period.

Have a Great Thanksgiving Holiday, each and everyone. Take care,

Joebra, you seem to have focused on one part of the advice given:

....The listings are indexed by the location of the office, not the areas served.

while not appeciating the equal importance of another part:

....Real estate agents get one listing.

Combine the two, and the full advice is clear: a real estate company is listed once in the location of the main office

The only thing that will change whenever Google updates its directory is that under the snippet for your site in Google's search results, the directory link will be to Riverside county and not Hemet

Click to expand...

I know. That is the problem. The common user at Google or on the web, looks for real estate by typing in the city name, not the county.

Click to expand...

You are still misunderstanding how Google ranks sites for its search results. Google looks at your site and determines what content (words) it has, and through its algorithms decides how relevant your site might be for any particular phrase a user types in. This has nothing to do with the category you are listed in. If you had no ODP listing at all, Google would still do this. If you want to rank well for "Hemet Real Estate", you can, based on your own site design, without being listed in a Hemet category.

When Google returns its search results, it checks to see if the URL is listed in the Directory, and if so displays the category link. This is kind of like saying to the user "if you are interested in this site, here's a category that has other similar sites". The category is supplementary information in the Google results, not the primary means for obtaining search results.

I hope I'm making sense. Don't let ODP's policies for listing only one site per real estate agent, at the geographic level encompassing all of that agent's offices, discourage you. You can market and promote your site more effectively on your own, without the multiple listings you were hoping for.

Again, Good Luck!

Thanks! Just for the record...I was truly number 2 in the Google results for "hemet real estate". When I was switched by the reader/ editor of this forum, I was removed from that positon. It may not make scholastic sense to any of you, but it happened. I print out my placements on search engines monthly to track them. Tell me how I can post the print out here so I can show you. Do a test for yourself. Put me back in the "hemet" results and you will see it come back. I do not know how or why, but I do know it works. Let me know where I can send you the proof. This just may be a flaw in the system????

I Understand it completely. "one listing" I mentioned in my posts that the guideline did not take into consideration the fact that an agent can open more than one office and serve customers from that office. He or she may have 2-20 offices. He or she may build a web site for each office. He or she may want the consumer to see what that office has to offer by putting a link to that office in the ODP. That agent would submit that office listing in the city it serves. The varifiable office is the standard, the "one listing" is the censored restriction. I think bad agents scamming the system and spamming the directories have ruined it for guys like me and made editors like you guys bitter for our category.

I can't find any other category or business in the ODP that has been restricted like this. It is sad Realtors have caused such a scenario and editors had to do this.

I hope if your looking for real estate in my area someday, you will remember my cities from this forum and not try to find me in the cities of the ODP. I won't be there for you to find, for I am in a county listing now. I condider myself a honest, very knowlegable agent and will give you the best representation. After all, you deserve it! Hemet and Temecula are my cities. Please remember me! Take care,

Nah, it was probably a complete co-incidence that you happened to drop at that time. Google just isn't that dynamic on factoring in backlinks and PR.

See the Google News forum of webmasterworld and look at the 2500 posts in the "Update Florida" threads to see that hundreds of commercial sites took a nosedive in the SERPs starting 2003-11-15 or thereabouts.

I would never look for a real estate agent on the internet anyway

P.S. Many of the editors who have contributed to our guidelines concerning real estate listings are themselves in the real estate industry. So it's not like this was just a bunch of geeky editors setting policy We've had a lot of experience in this area and if you were an editor I think you would be shocked at some of the tactics your collegues try to use to get their sites listed. There are only a few industries that we have specific guidelines for above and beyond our general guidelines. Adult, Gambling, Travel, and Real Estate are just a few. It's sad that we have had to create specific guidelines for these areas, but thats what happens when people try to abuse the system.

I would never look for a real estate agent on the internet anyway

Click to expand...

Just curious, where would you look and why? Thanks

There is one way to find out! Put my listing back in the city of Hemet Locality. It belongs there.

My Brokers company site is www.remax-experience.com. That site promotes the general 4 offices he owns. My site www.hemet-real-estate.com, promotes the Hemet Real Estate market and the office that serves Hemet. My site www.temecula-real-estate.com serves the Temecula Real Estate market. That is why they are named that way. I am not www.riverside-county-real-estate.com. I am counting on common sense to prevail here in the end. If I can't have the 2 cities in which my office and web sites serve, I would like to be put in at least one locality as the guideline states.

Where would I find the forum you had mentioned?

P.S. Many of the editors who have contributed to our guidelines concerning real estate listings are themselves in the real estate industry. So it's not like this was just a bunch of geeky editors setting policy We've had a lot of experience in this area and if you were an editor I think you would be shocked at some of the tactics your collegues try to use to get their sites listed.

Click to expand...

Trust me, I truly belive over 60% of licensed agents have no business selling property. There are some real snakes and idiots in this field. I have to deal with them on a daily basis. I do, however, find it hard to believe an agent helping establish guidelines, did not foresee the possibility of himself serving two or more bordering cities out of different offices. You have to have an office in the city you serve in order to meet the client. You also have to have the office to go back to. That is typically where the deal is written.

I think the guideline was designed to keep the snakes from blanketing every city in the state in the search engines. It is a policy I have presented to all the major search engines and pay per clicks out there for the last 7 years. I embrace it! Why, because in the pay per click, I have a guy from San Diego or Los Angeles driving up the bids to become number one in a city or search term he cannot serve. He get's the lead and then refers it to an agent in that city for a fee. This practice makes the search results useless and unreliable! In search engines, you have the same thing. Submitting with keywords to cities just to create a lead they can send to the "real" agent that works that city and has an office there.

My "collegues" are the true agents. The ones that stick to what they know and the city in which the do business directly. Those are the ones I call collegues. The others are snakes and scammers. My sites are named after the city and have my office address posted.

I grew up here, graduated school here. Went away a short time to college, but returned to raise my family here. I know this area better than most and truly give my clients the best representation because of it. I just want the consumer to find my site when they search the cities I have my office in and serve. I wish I could apoligize for the abuse you have had to endure, but I all I can do is agree.

I think this thread has more than served its original purpose, which was to explain to you why you couldn't have multiple sites listed for your real estate business. You've been given detailed explanations from a number of people and your site is currently listed in the appropriate place for it per our guidelines. Arguing/complaining about the guidelines is inappropriate for these forums.

[Check out http://www.webmasterworld.com for the Google-related threads mentioned previously.]

Thread being closed as its purpose has been served.

Sorry, just one last thing before I close this again. I would look in the Yellow Pages or ask friends and family to refer me to a reputable agent

Have you actually looked at your listing in the ODP?
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/California/Counties/Riverside/Business_and_Economy/Real_Estate/
It looks pretty good to me. I think that it will serve your purpose if the downstream users pick up the ODP listings.