Jonathan Dalton has a great review of an article to be printed in tomorrow's Arizona Republic. No point in me rehashing Jonathan's work, you should take a cyber-stroll over there and read it (after you finish here of course!)
JD points out that the FSBO real estate site mentioned in the article has quite the claim on their web site. Scrawled across the banner of their web site is this statement:
#1 Real Estate Website in Phoenix - as ranked by Alexa.com
The site is www.by owner az.com (you'll have to close the spaces of course).
I'm not a big fan of Alexa, their rankings are highly suspect due to how they measure them (they only count visits from sites browsers using the Alexa tool bar). But if you are going to boldly claim you are the #1 real estate web site as ranked by them, then you have to expect someone like me is going to check out said claim.
There are thousands of real estate sites in Phoenix. So to pare down the choices, I decided to do a Google search for the term "Phoenix Real Estate". I think it's completely fair to say that almost any site ranking near the top of Google for the search term Phoenix Real Estate can safely be called a "Real Estate Website in Phoenix". We'll toss out the national sites such as Yahoo, HomeGain, etc. as you can't really call those "real estate web sites in Phoenix". Heck, let's throw out the local newspaper that shows up in #9 — that's not really a real estate web site either. The "Phoenix Real Estate Company" is actually located in Detroit, so we'll boot them from the analysis too. (that one sure shows the power of keywords in on-page content though!)
We'll take the first 10 *local* websites returned with the Phoenix real estate search and compare their Alexa rankings to byowneraz.com's rankings. Fair enough?
[TABLE=3]
For those not familiar with Alexa rankings, lower is better.
So byowneraz.com is proudly and loudly claiming to be, the "#1 Real Estate Website in Phoenix - as ranked by Alexa.com".
How do they figure that?
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Greg Swann 06.01.07 at 10:00 pm
Not to be a complete booger, but…
Traffic Rank for BloodhoundRealty.com: 64,436
It’s BloodhoundBlog, of course. The brokerage is only competitive on long-tail searches.
Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy 06.01.07 at 10:40 pm
Not boogerish at all! (and *nice* ranking! Could well be the true “#1 real estate site in Phoenix”)
Just further evidence how far off base this claim of “#1 real estate website in Phoenix” really is. I suspect there are *hundreds* of Phoenix real estate sites with higher Alexa rankings than byowneraz.com.
Just for grins, I picked out a few more.
scottsellsaz.com ranks #250 on Google for “Phoenix Real Estate”. They have higher Alexa ratings than byowneraz.com…
movetoarizonahomes.com ranks #475… yep, you guessed it — higher ranking than byowneraz.com…
jasonrfriedman.com ranks #623 in Google, and yes, has a better Alexa ranking than byowneraz.com…
Their claim to be the #1 site is ludicrous. Kind of makes one suspect every other claim on their site, doesn’t it?
Real estate consumers need to proceed with extreme caution when faced with claims like, “#1 real estate site in Phoenix”, “Top producing agent in town”, “#1 Agent on the planet” etc etc, ad nauseam.
Norm Fisher 06.01.07 at 10:45 pm
So a fsbo website told a lie?
Congratulations on your excellent Alexa rating!
Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy 06.01.07 at 11:01 pm
Yeah, hard to imagine isn’t it Norm? Sadly, I see all sorts of agents with similar claims. I once got a flyer on my car from the self-professed “#1 Agent in Phoenix!!”. The guy had been licensed for something like a month.
I don’t think the general public puts much credibility in these sorts of claims. If anything, it just adds to a lot of the negative connotation that real estate agents have. Sadly, there probably are some consumers that are duped into using someone based on their false claims. Hopefully they are better agents than they are marketers and statisticians and those that use them don’t get totally screwed.
John L. Wake - Realtor 06.02.07 at 12:57 am
“#1 Real Estate Website in Phoenix - as ranked by Alexa.com”
So he just drops “as ranked by Alexa.com” and he’s kosher.
As it is now, it’s not puffery, its a gross misrepresention of the value of a listing on his website. Homes on his website will not get anything close to the exposure claimed.
If I were a disappointed client, I would ask for my money back immediately.
Tony Marriott 06.02.07 at 6:29 am
Jay - I took a look at the “wonder site” mentioned above. Their testimonial page has a total of 10 entries. 7 from 2005 when everything available was moving quickly, 2 from 2006 and just 1 from 2007 so far. Seems to be a sharp decline in the number of satisfied customers - not that 10 in 3 years represents much in the way of market share!
Norm Fisher 06.02.07 at 9:17 am
Jay, there’s a Canadian trainer that actually advises agents to just begin advertising that they are “number 1.” Apparently he did it with a fair bit of success early on in his real estate career.
I agree that the public has almost had enough of these vague and often meaningless claims.
Douglas Trudeau 06.02.07 at 9:58 am
Jay - As can be expected you and Gregg at on top of it. I ran mine on Alexa and ranked 411,417. Not quite Gregg or you, but a work in progress. Number one is no fun anyway, there’s no place to go but down.
When I hear and read about articles in the newspaper I am always reminded of what a professor said about natural horticulture. If you need good strong fertilizer, use newspaper. It’s full of it.
Louis Cammarosano 06.02.07 at 11:46 am
try this site for rankings (byowneraz doesn’t rank)
http://www.compete.com
Maureen Francis 06.04.07 at 2:43 pm
It is easy to see that you have worked hard on your site and your blog. I will do my best Mr. T imitation and say, “I pity the fools that believe the FSBO dude who misrepresented his achievements.”