Over the past few months, we've been publishing a series of articles that evaluates the features and benefits of the top portals. So far, we've explored how property search portals protect your brand and help you build your brand with agents. Today, we're going to look at the final piece of the puzzle - how portals support you in building your brand with consumers.

When beginning their home buying journey, portals are often the first place a consumer goes. This means they're crucial in building initial awareness of your brand. As in our previous articles, we're going to evaluate how portals accomplish this. Here's the criteria we'll be using today:

• Broker attribution on search results
• Link to broker source
• Photos and property descriptions

Please note that two items we've previously discussed in this series are also crucial components in building your brand: The placement of broker attribution on the property details page and listings accuracy.

Though we covered it in our first article of this series, the importance of listings accuracy cannot be overstated. It's tied to how consumers view your brand—inaccurate listings that result in potential buyers calling on properties that have been sold or pending leads to distrust in your company. Make it a point in 2015 to understand when and where your listings appear online, how publishers handle your data, and how frequently your data is refreshed.

1. Broker attribution on search results

In our last article, we discussed attribution of the listing agent/broker on the property details page. Repetition is key to building your brand, so there's another place that broker attribution needs to be in order to increase awareness of your company in the consumer's mind.

The search results page is the first place a prospect will encounter your brand's name. Simply scrolling through the list of properties on this page will reveal which brokerages have the most listings in the area and price range that the consumer is searching for. If the consumer is not yet working with a brokerage, repeated exposure to your company's name on multiple listings may influence them to reach out to you.

Each of the three major portals offer broker attribution on search results. However, Zillow only lists the broker on premium listings, while realtor.com and Trulia give the broker credit on all active listings. However, only Trulia provides attribution on sold properties, which also helps build your brand and credibility, especially with sellers looking to partner with a reputable and successful real estate professional.

• Trulia - Yes, for all, including sold listings
• Zillow - For premium listings only
• realtor.com® - Yes, for all active, but not sold listings

2. Link to broker source

Knowing where a listing comes from builds trust with a consumer. When a listing links back to its syndication source, the consumer is able to follow the link to verify the listing's accuracy. Even better, a link back to the source can drive traffic directly to the broker's website where consumers can learn more about your company, see more listings, and contact an agent.

Both Trulia and Zillow offer links to the syndication source. Trulia, however, gets higher marks due to the placement of the broker attribution and link in a more prominent place. Trulia's link is directly below the property description where it's more likely to be clicked on; Zillow's link back is at the bottom of the property details page. Realtor.com, on the other hand, offers no link back at all.

• Trulia - Yes, above the fold of the property details page
• Zillow - Yes, at the bottom of the property details page
• realtor.com® - No

3. Photos and property descriptions

When it comes to photos and the length of property descriptions, the conventional wisdom says "more is better." We dispute that, however. While it's important that portals let you display a generous amount of photos, when you overwhelm the consumer with too much information or too many photos, you lessen the likelihood of them contacting you for more information.

Instead, think in terms of quality over quantity. Can you upload big, beautiful high-resolution photos? For example, Zillow allows unlimited photos with file sizes of up to 25 MB each and encourages high-res photographs. Realtor.com, on the other hand, only allows a maximum of 36 photos per listing with a maximum file size of 1 MB. However, realtor.com also offers on-site editing tools that let you crop and modify your photos without the need for software like PhotoShop.

• Trulia - Unlimited photos, 4 MB each
• Zillow - Unlimited photos, 25 MB each
• realtor.com® - Up to 36 photos, 1 MB each