July 6 2010

I am looking for some interesting case studies or ideas on best practice regarding online collaboration (using of social media tools/platforms) in the commercial property/corporate real estate industry.

If anyone has any good examples of team/project collaboration they would like to share – please get in contact: andrew@revolution-pr.co.uk

Thanks in advance

Andrew

This is a question I have been asked a few times recently - mainly when talking about the Property Search Index report that we publish each month.

The question is usually asked by those that are curious as to why their websites are not ranked as highly as they would like by the search engines (actually when they say "search engines" they actually mean Google) or by those who wonder why they do not receive the number of visits to their websites that they hope for.

The introduction of Google's "Property Search" this week has been seen by the majority of commentators as a sea-change in the way in which the details of properties are advertised and brought to the market.

But how will it be used? Will there be a surge of home owners placing their property on the market without the assistance of an estate agent? Will it be embraced by those seeking a new home?

The following blog appeared earlier today on Property Week.

I thought that I would repeat it here.

Levels of online searches for commercial real estate in th UK fell again during May; as revealed in our "Property Search Index" - this is the third month running that volumes of searches have fallen. Has the market stalled?

The overall fall was only very slight when compared to April - but the figure would have been much worse had it not been for a dramatic bounce back in the levels of online interest in the industrial and distribution sector, which fell badly in April. All the other sectors studied fell during May.

Google - the world's favourite search engine - is changing. The question is will the real estate industry realise what it needs to do to take advantage?

The changes were announced earlier in the week here: Google. The changes appear to be quite fundamental and Google has explained its new engine, called "Caffeine", in the following way: