Jason, good questions. In terms of SEO, there is certainly a potential for a lot of backlinking to Zillow. The footer has a link to Zillow link in it, which can be turned off, but the vast majority of users probably won’t figure that out (or even realize its importance). The footer link is the same practice that many WP theme creators use, nothing nefarious about it, just something to be aware of.

The use of Zillow widgets within your agent site can also redirect traffic. Although they have good information, clicking on them leads buyers to the Zillow site and back to a larger pool of agents/competitors. From a lead generation standpoint, it’s a net negative, in my opinon, to send your buyer traffic out to another lead-generating site, even if the widget data is interesting.

Overall, the look and the options are pretty phenomenal at $10/mo (there will be MLS fees tacked on for some brokers/agents, so it may be $60/mo, for example, in the NWMLS). In terms of actual lead generation, though, it’s a tough sell without stripping it down to its basics.

In Feburary the CEO of Zillow talked about their vision for the future of the company. The stated goal was to become the one-stop shop for marketing solutions, for agents. And this is consistent with recent acquisitions such as DiverseSolutions and Postlets. There are many goals achieved with this move but I think the single most important move, is to drive out a lot of the “noise” and competition they currently face in the Internet market for agents field. In fact, I recently created an index of companies servicing agents related to online marketing and I came up with 167 companies. No kidding – 167! So if they can knock over 3/4s of these companies with this action and simultaneously engender goodwill for agents who might spend money on product, then all the better.

Regarding SEO links, you’re thinking too small business. Considering Google’s proclivity to tweaking their algos and in light of the recent Penguin update that directly attacks these sorts of link profiles, (a) the SEO upside will be mitigated over time and (b) a large business wouldn’t spend money or strategy hours on something so fly-by-night. If they happen to get SEO benefit along the way, great! But they’re not going to launch a multi-million dollar initiative over it.

As for a backdoor way to get data – well, that’s interesting. Perhaps yeah it blurs the lines syndication/IDX data policies a bit and allows them to improve their data a bit … except they recently (voluntarily) released their own manifesto for proper use of data, which explicitly excludes use of data on other owned properties, other than those granted permission to use the data.

No – I think the big story here – is Zillow trying to clear the Internet marketing table of excessive competitors, so they can run the table. And I think you’ll see a lot of premium services (think premium designs and lead services) introduced on top of this platform later this year, once they have a lot of the ‘noise’ competition on the run!

I agree with Sam.. The backlinks to Zillow is going to really help them
out rank most agents and only make the agents more dependent on Zillow for traffic…

Plus all the widgets agents are putting on their sites helps Zillows SEO
and also helps drive traffic back to Zillow… Just a win for Zillow.

If agents were smart they would just get a good site that actually
converts better than the crap they are almost giving away and drive
traffic from Craigslist and Google adwords. That traffic converts at a
much higher rate then the traffic you pay to get from Zillow anyways.

Come on agent… wake up!! You are shooting yourself in the foot…

Then you have agents and trainers selling out telling you how great it
is going to be.. They are getting paid to do that 😉 If Trulia or
Realtor.com paid them more they would be pushing them!!! They don’t have
your best interest in mind.. They have their pocket book!!

I have wondered how many agents actually have their own sites and what
percentage of those use something like this rather than building their
own site? I know that it will be an unbelievably high percentage. I
guess I just want to know how many agents are like sheep.

Agents are creatures of habits. Whether it is the same template website they signed up for 5 years ago or the regular non-responsive ads they have crafted for 15, they seldom if ever change.
Zillow has made a very strategic move that simply moves Agents under the Zillow Banner. Relying upon 1000’s of Agents to direct consumers to urls supported by the Zillow infrastructure is clearly another way Zillow is using the lack of expertise in the Agent community to capitalize on their ignorance. Sadly the major franchise brands are not educating their brand users with information on key business strategies the Agent needs to use to control their business.

As Zillow builds syndication inventory and draws more and more home buyers to any site it’s platform supports, you will see the ability for a low cost (to the Agent) alternate to the MLS to be able to be created.

Anyone who does not believe Zillow wants to replace MLS is foolish. Any Agent who adds to Zillow’s cause is short sighted and will not be prepared when the U.S. market begins to recover.

We got the Premier Website for free for being a Zillow Premier Agent and buying a zip code. We have to a decent ROI on the zip code we purchased but as for the site I would like some opinions. We are not going to use it as our main site, our main site is actually being redone right now and will launch next week. But I have heard conflicting things from other places. Some people say to take it down, it’s going to compete with and dilute your main site. Others say why not, it’s free. The site is http://www.westvalleyrealestate.co and I have found that you can customize the search pages by adding menu items based on the Diverse Solutions naming convention, so instead of just add a Community Page with what looks like dsIDXpress output you can also get a map search feature as well. It’s honestly not a bad site. But I don’t want to take away or compete wit our main site. I just see it as another way to capture leads. Thought or opinions?

I thought that I’d try it out. They wouldn’t let me know before I paid that their’s no IDX feed from my MLS and if I wanted it, would need to pay extra monthly. I would like them to be able to give me some alternative search possibilities that I could use.