Monday Morning Mobile: Google Changes = Broker Opportunity

Last week I had the good fortune to attend RISMedia's Real Estate CEO Exchange and, as always, their team led by John Featherston put together an absolutely phenomenal event! From start to finish, the day-and-a-half agenda kept all those in attendance fully engaged, offering countless insights and takeaways from industry leaders.

Among the many great sessions, one in particular left the biggest impression, as it relates to today's mobile technology, which we focus on here at Monday Morning Mobile. John Lim, President and CEO of Mobile Real Estate ID, LLC, fresh off a twenty city Google "Adsense in Your City" tour, shared the details and corresponding opportunities that are being created for brokers right now due to changes taking place with Google mobile.

Google, who essentially controls the consumer search experience, has made a major change in the way in which search results are presented on your desktop compared to your mobile device. Now, on mobile, local results are of much greater importance than they have ever been. For example, if you were to search for "homes for sale Tarrytown, NY" on your mobile device, you will see one paid ad--the top organic result--and then results for local real estate firms in Tarrytown listed through Google Places.

What does this mean? That Zillow has fallen from 3rd to 10th on mobile and no matter how much they SEO they do, for mobile users, they will not get back to the top. Conversely, as a local broker with an office and sales associates in that market, you have the unique opportunity to win local!

In addition, Google will begin tagging sites as "mobile" in the search results to inform consumers prior to them clicking on your link whether your site is mobile or not. Their new search bot will crawl your site to determine whether your content is formatted for use on mobile or not, and they will flag it as such. They are doing everything in their power to cater to the constantly mobile consumer and ensure that they have the proper experience – don't you think you should, too?

The stats and examples John shared with those in attendance over breakfast last Thursday morning certainly seemed to hit home, as the session was referenced throughout the day by many of the other speakers and presenters.

What hit home for me was this: the products you buy are not nearly as important as the strategy with which they are implemented. Having a team of experts should be as important for your mobile strategy as it is for your web or overall marketing strategy. This technology is growing so quickly and changing so rapidly that in most cases, in order to truly capitalize on it, you need a partner who can help you formulate and integrate your mobile strategy with everything else you're doing.