Category Archives: New Zealand
Business Logos Now on Google Maps
Over the past few months, it’s become clear that Google Maps isn’t just about directions. With the release of Place Pages, the Favourite Places program, and a set of tools aimed specifically at real estate agents, we now know Google Maps wants to become as important to businesses as it is to people figuring out how to get from A to B.
Google Reveals Real Estate “Vision”
Since Google first began adding real estate listings to Google Maps in mid-2009, the world of online real estate has been monitoring the company’s every move. Each upgrade brought more speculation on how Google was planning to change things for property portals, real estate agents, and property hunters.
Now, we have a clearer idea of where Google is headed.
Google Real Estate – Should Agents Bank On It?
The news just over a week ago that Google was “entering” the UK/European market has sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. Seloger dropped by 9% while Rightmove has plummeted a whopping 17%. Seloger has since recovered to its pre-news price while Rightmove continues to be significantly down.
So let’s look at what happened, will the property portal landscape change and is this impact on the share prices is justified.
An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia.