Syndication of Listings - Are You Getting it Done?

Over at The Notorious R.O.B., a post titled Listings Aren't Airline Tickets points out that Realtors could face a disgruntled seller if they pull listings from selected sites or aggregators.

The post is about the American Airlines decision to pull its ticket listings from Kayak, and their right to do so. As they own the seats being sold, they can only damage their own sales if a decision turns out to be a poor one. Realtors doing the same, pulling a listing from any site, may risk the ire of the seller who wants as much exposure as possible. No, listings definitely are not airline tickets. And we do not own the home, as American does the seat. Many real estate professionals would agree, and they believe that they owe their client exposure on the Zillows and Trulias of the world.

If you're not quite up to speed on this subject, there is some basic listing syndication information here. If you are, and you are advertising to seller prospects that you're doing it, are you really doing it? And, are you checking to be sure that it gets done? If you're like me, you rely on certain services to propagate the listing across these sites, as there are just too many to go in and do it individually.

Recently, I decided to check to see if a listing had made it to all the sites promised by two services that I use. Neither had managed to get the listing on all the sites promised, with one doing a very poor job. And, this was three months into the listing, so it wasn't a delay issue. One site did very well, though Trulia didn't have the listing. Upon contacting Trulia and my service, a problem was located and the listing was up the next day. The problem had to do with the address, which was a 0 (zero) and a street name. It was in the desert, west of the Rio Grande Gorge in Northern New Mexico. Addresses don't seem important to those living off the grid out there.

The point is that I no longer take the syndication for granted. A week or so into a new listing, I go to the major sites, Oodle, Google Base, Trulia, etc., to make sure that it made it up. Oh, and don't forget that you can syndicate videos as well. Though the quality of video can be less than you might desire on the large free sites, the exposure if valuable. I've written a real estate video tutorial that will help.