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Real Estate Search Engine Comparison

Atlanta Real Estate News | Email the Author: Brad Nix, Managing+Broker
Posted: January 19th, 2008
Category: real estate news



This test was conducted Friday, Jan 18th for zip code 30107.

Kris Berg in San Diego recently wrote an article comparing and contrasting the different real estate search engines. Please read her article, as I don’t want to rehash her excellent points. My goal is to apply her analysis method to our local market here in Cherokee County and then interpret these results for our local audience.

To echo Kris’ point, your local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is the most comprehensive resource for accessing available homes on the market. In our case, the local MLS is First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS) with some overlap from GA MLS.

In order to get a sample size that is easy to handle and within most search engine results limits, I chose Ball Ground, GA as my test market. Specifically, I searched zip code 30107 and found these results:

Active Listings by Search Tool

These results raise many questions…

What is the real number of Active Listings in 30107?
233, FMLS is the industry standard in this area and they have the most accurate listings.

Why does Metro Atlanta have two MLS systems? Why don’t their results match?
Historically, GA MLS was used on the south side of Atlanta and FMLS was used on the northside. They have both grown to cover the majority of Metro Atlanta and overlap in almost every single county. As for why the results don’t match…FMLS is used by more brokers in Atlanta and especially so by those brokers on the north side of the city.

Why do Realtor.com and Zillow.com show more results than actual listings?
They must pull their results from FMLS & GAMLS and combine the two, instead of parse them.

Why is there deviation by one or two listings among the closest results to FMLS?
FMLS is constantly updated throughout the day and most of the search engine sites only download the data at night. Thereby creating some slight variation depending on time of day viewed. (*Buyer tip – search first thing in the morning to get apples to apples or subscribe to daily email updates of new listings.)

What are REW, dsSearch, and Listingware?
These are third party IDX providers that local agents and brokers hire to aggregate data from the local MLS. Instead of referencing local agent’s websites themselves, I just listed the commonly used IDX providers who generate the agents’ search results. Maxsell.net uses iHomeFinder for it’s third party IDX service.

I hope this comparison clarifies the difference of real estate listing search engines results. I think it further confirms that real estate is local and working directly with a local Realtor is the best source for accurate listings and data. However, it is imperative that the local Realtor understands these differences. If you are a Seller, your broker better be submitting your listing to all of these services in addition to the oodles, vast, hotpads, and other similar services as referenced by Kris in her article.

In my goal to clarify things, I am certain I have created more questions than I have given answers for. I encourage you to comment below with any questions you would like for me to answer.

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