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Last week we blogged about the importance of Listing Syndication and various methods of distributing your property data to search sites such as Zillow, Trulia, Google Base, etc..

So far these search sites have largely remained free. Today, however, Zillow.com announced that they will begin charging users to submit real estate listings to the popular website. Zillow says this new change will improve the timeliness and quality of listings on the site.

While speaking to a customer today, I was reminded that most people have little interest in how a search engine works (I don't blame them!). As long as they get relative results when the "Search" button is clicked, they're usually happy.

This particular customer wanted to know:

"How come my individual property website is not showing up in Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.)?

This is a common questions and the short answer is usually: The website is too new. A common misconception is that our websites (or any website for that matter) will show up in search engines immediately after they have been published. This is simply not the case...

First, let me explain the difference between a "live site" and one that has been "indexed"?

We receive a lot of questions about Syndication (RSS feeds) so I thought I would take a moment to quickly explain what it is, how it works and why it's an excellent ways to market your properties online.

What is real estate listing syndication?

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS Syndication feeds are now widely used across the real estate industry to distribute property data. With an RSS feed you can automatically send frequently changing property information out to real estate listing search sites such as Trulia.com, Zillow.com, Google Base and many more.