I’ve got good news and bad news for Arizona Real Estate Professionals. Today, the search engine giant Google rolls out Google preview. What’s Google Preview? Great Question! Remember the old days (yesterday) when consumers would search for, oh let’s say……short sale listings in Gilbert Arizona. Well, after search returned pages and pages of results, the consumer would then click on the link that they thought best represented what they were looking for, usually from the TEXT excerpt.
Most consumers would then click on website after website until they found a site that best represented their search, “short sale listings in Gilbert Arizona”. Some Real Estate professionals are under the illusion that consumers would click through to the agents website and then root around their website for the information they requested. I say illusion because I know for a fact that most people don’t do this. In fact, if the information the consumer wants is not at the end of that click, they are most likely on to the next website. Sure, they may look some, but a forensic audit kind of search, Ehh, not so much.
Google Preview could diminish consumers clicking site to site to site. Google Preview will allow the consumer to hover over the magnifying glass next to each search result (new feature) which will then bring up a screenshot or preview of the website-your website-so they can judge whether your website is relevant or not before they click through to it.
Google Preview MyTitleGuy.net
Google ‘s Ben Gomes explains:
“This is the next step in the story of Instant,” Ben Gomes, a Google Distinguished Engineer, says. He notes that Google has gone from a standard text input, to auto complete, to Instant, and now we have Instant Previews. This is all about “pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with technology,”……….This is part of making search more interactive and fun and fluid…What we want to do is give users a hint of what a result page looks like and show them the keywords in the context of that web page. Gomes says.
What does this mean to you? Great question! Well, if you are one of those agents that has a standard, cookie cutter, (blah) website, you know, the kind with little or no SEO, little or no consumer friendly navigation tools; click throughs to your website may slow. Because now, the consumer can see the content on your website, the navigation tools on your website, the look of your website, colors, spacing, buttons before clicking through. Another thing to consider, preview will also show the consumer if the link goes directly to the content they are requesting or a homepage. Yet another reason to consider…..(drum roll please) A BLOG! Yep, I said it again. Blog, Blog, Blog, I’m going to keep saying it until you wake up a realize that you need one!
And Now you know. And Knowing is Half The Battle.
I help real estate professionals get "found" on the Internet
