If you haven't tried this before, it is an interesting little exercise:
Google the address of one of your listings. Like this:
For example, our listing at 5024 Lincoln yielded these results:
Our vflyer postings show up in first and second postion, followed by our own Hotsheet blog, then Zillow, then LAlife (I have no clue who LAlife is, will have to check them out.) Trulia comes in sixth postion.
Another example, our listing at 3800 Scandia Way
On this one, our craigslist posting shows up first, followed by another craigslist posting that seems to have gotten jumbled up with something in Long Beach. Third and fourth position goes to Trulia. The vflyer posting comes in fifth, followed by Bob's posting on Active Rain.
Interesting, huh?
P.S. Also interesting to note: There is a single property website out there for 5024 Lincoln, that the photographer created: http://www.5024lincolnavenue.com That didn't show up on the first page of the search results.
Very interesting.
UPDATE: It gets even more interesting. I just re-ran the search on 3800 Scandia. In less than one hour, things have changed. Trulia has moved into second and third position. Vflyer in fourth postion. And this VERY blog post here on Active Rain has moved into fifth position:
My first theory about the reason that AR post showed so quickly: That blog contained a link to a set of Google Search Results. The content of the blog post discussed the Search Results. So it set in motion a kind of endless circular effect. I guess I should check again this morning to see if the search results have changed again.
Second theory: The Google spider was having a slow night. <s>
Third theory: The Observer Effect (In quantum mechanics, the term observer effect means that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed.)
Steve: To answer your first question. We do this most often when a buyer is in the office, telling us he or she saw a sign on a property at so-and-so address, and the property does not show up in either of the local MLSs.
Occaisionly we'll do this in a listing presentation, but mostly we don't. Why? Because many sellers come to us saying "We already Googled you, we already looked at your web site and blogs, we already read everything about you". Heck, they probably know more about us than I do. Although this is one little trick they may not have thought of....<s>.