Google has said that it has no plans to have another crack at online property marketing in the UK, following the failure five years ago of its short-lived foray into the property portals business.
Addressing the inaugural Future Property Tech Conference in London this week, keynote speaker Scott Sinclair, industry manager at the technology giant, confirmed that Google has no plans to play a direct role in the property market.
Instead, he added, the company is fully focused on exploiting its position as the world’s leading data source to develop a range of advanced B2B products and services – for example, analysing consumer online behaviour patterns in order to identify precisely who is looking to rent or buy property, enabling agents’ marketing efforts to be far more accurately targeted.
Meanwhile, with half of all Google searches now conducted via smartphone, Sinclair emphasised that the single most important thing for agents looking to maximise their online marketing presence is to ensure that websites are mobile-friendly.
This, along with video content, is also key to improving SEO, he added.
Comments (4)
The presentation at Prop Tech by Scott Sinclair of google was outstanding and he shared some profound insights which are of interest to everyone reading this.
I recorded an interview with him and hopefully captured some of the key points he made about tech in the property space and what all businesses need to be doing.
There are no live links here, so you will have to cut and paste the below if you would like to view the video. 🙂
http://www.propertytribes.com/an-inspirational-chat-with-google-about-property-tech-t-127622225.html
Have you seen the recent update to Google Maps? It actually has rough “guesstimate” outlines of buildings on it and whilst there are some mistakes, most of them are pretty accurate.
Given that Rightmove embeds a Google Map for nearly every property, I think I can see the way this could go.
I think that that Google could quite easily do a deal with Rightmove or others to do something like https://www.google.co.uk/maps/properties-for-sale or equivalent that would then link the RM / OTM / Z property listing.
Actually that would be 1) Seriously Cool and 2) One portal to rule them all, completely free of charge and with advertising on the side to make Google even more money.
‘We currently have no plans to…’ Well…that sounds like the perfect politician’s statement
So let me get this right……no plans to get involved in portals (marketing channels) but vague plans to help agents “market more accurately?”
What does Mr Sinclair mean? Perhaps Google sees a future without portals rather than competing directly with the incumbents.
TB