Google Base gathers more real estate listings

Windermere makes for-sale properties available to search engine
Inman News
Windermere Real Estate is the latest regional brokerage company to make property listings available to consumers searching Google Base for real estate.

The company announced it provide continuous feeds of all its listings to the Google Base classified listing service. Windermere has 330 offices and 8,400 associates with listings in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and Washington.

"Where your customers are is where you need to be," said Geoff Wood, CEO of Windermere. "And when people search for information today, they search with Google."

Google last week unveiled a new site for real estate companies interested in including their property listings in the Google Base service. The search company is trying to make it easier for brokers, agents and other real estate professionals to have their listings included in property searches. The new site categorizes users as brokers, agents, MLSs and IDX vendors. (IDX stands for Internet data exchange, a method by which brokers share listings online.)

Property listings uploaded to Google Base also appear in a general Google search.

Two additional brokerage companies last month announced content partnerships with Google to provide property listings and agent information to the search-engine company. Columbus, Ohio-based Real Living, with nearly 4,000 agents in 12 states, and Prudential California/Nevada/Texas Realty, which has about 5,000 agents in 139 offices, separately announced that they would make property listings available to Google Base.