There is a critical gap in the Internet marketing strategies of today’s apartment communities. Today many consumers are beginning their Internet search for an apartment with Internet mapping services. First, they enter the address of their place of employment and then search nearby for apartments. The assumption has been that the consumer typed the word “apartments” or “rental” in a standard search engine and was brought to all the popular Internet Listing Services (ILS). However, Trendwatcher.com and other sources are reporting that more and more consumers are narrowing their search by entering their address. This leads them to the mapping services and apartment information at Goggle neighborhoods or Goggle Maps.
Why is this an urgent problem?
The information used in populating Goggle Maps and many other mapping services was retrieved from online classified ads and yellow pages. Often, this information does not include the toll free number used for accurate lead tracking, but rather lists the local direct phone number. If the customer is calling our regular landline, with no tracking, we would not know they came from an online mapping service. This may explain why we have not caught this problem until now.
One of the most troubling discoveries was the population of the mapping services link to the reviews at ApartmentRatings.com. At the top of each ad at Google Maps, there is a direct link to reviews on the property listed. The reviewer is able to rate the property with one (lowest) to five (highest) stars. In many cases the only link for more information is to ApartmentRatings.com – with no other links directly to the property site, company site or ILS. Have you looked at your reviews lately at ApartmentRatings.com? Do you monitor this site and the content? What if your most valuable internet leads first read this information before they visited your property or company web site? What if they had no link to your property’s web site or ILS ad, and this was all they had to go by?
Online shopping patterns take consumers to the mapping services?
We can no longer assume that we know consumer shopping patterns. Millions of dollars has been spent to purchase keywords searches i.e. “apartment” and “rent” from the major search engines like Goggle and Yahoo. Unfortunately, a new insurgence of mapping capabilities has captured the online shoppers interest and they are now reorienting their search to begin with a specific address. Goggle just introduced a new service, Goggle neighborhood search capabilities, with an overwhelming response from the public. Mapping has begun finding it’s way into social networking, job search and all areas of online services. This is making a huge impact on the way we monitor our online presence.
Who is going to fix this?
Management clients that I have spoken to insist that Internet Listing Services (ILS) and content management services will populate the site with current data for them. When I spoke to a national representative at one of a top ILS, they explained that it was impossible to keep up with all the online shopper trends, and that eventually the information would make it way to the mapping services through a process called a “spider”.
What is a Spider?
TechTerms.com defines a spider as: A spider is a software program that travels the Web (hence the name "spider"), locating and indexing websites for search engines. All the major search engines, such as Goggle and Yahoo! use spiders to build and update their indexes. These programs constantly browse the Web, traveling from one hyperlink to another.
For example, when a spider visits a website's home page, there may be 30 links on the page. The spider will follow each of the links, adding all the pages it finds to the search engine's index. Of course, the new pages that the spider finds may also have links, which the spider continues to follow. Some of these links may point to pages within the same website (internal links), while others may lead to different sites (external links). The external links will cause the spider to jump to new sites, indexing even more pages. Usually, the more incoming links a page has, the higher it will be ranked in search engine results. Spiders not only find new pages and keep track of links, they also track changes to each page, helping search engine indexes stay up to date. The bad news is that it can take several weeks, or months, for your information from the spider to be updated in the search engine index. In the meantime, you are losing valuable leads!
D.I.Y.
In this fast paced online world there are times when you simply can’t wait for someone else to do the job for you – this is ultimately your responsibility. Leading companies are now assigning one person from their company to assure that the mapping services have their correct information, toll free tracking numbers and a link directly to their corporate website. The second step is to be sure the online reviews are loaded with positive, glowing reports on your wonderful property. We know that the average renter will read up to five ads so be sure the last five are always positive comments from your best residents! Below you will find a list of the current mapping services with instructions on how to speed up the update process. None of these services are subscription, all are free and easy to update.
MapQuest.com
http://mapquest.com - To add or update a listing, go to http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm
MultiMap.com
http://www.multimap.com - Go to its source, http://maps.live.com and click on “feedback” on the bottom right of your screen. Updates eventually filter through to MultiMap.
Google.com
http://maps.google.com - Use the Local Business Center to create your listing by clicking on “Put your business on Google Maps” on the left side of your screen.
Yahoo Maps
http://maps.yahoo.com - Yahoo has created a feedback form that you can use to contact them about listings, found at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/maps/general.html. Changes can take several weeks to show up.
Ask.com
http://maps.ask.com/maps - Ask.com uses “crawlers” to obtain information from your web site using the “open-format Sitemaps protocol.” Your webmaster (a.k.a. the person who does your web site) can create a sitemap for your site, and can then add the sitemap auto-discovery directive to robots.txt. It can take a few weeks for your listing to start showing up. Go to http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#22 for more information. This information is also useful for updating your listing on all the major search engines that use crawlers to obtain their information.
Google Earth
http://earth.google.com - This is a free down loadable software. For complete information on using the software, go to http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/.
WikiMapia.org
http://wikimapia.org - This functions much like Google Earth. From the home page, click on “Add a New Place” at the top-left of your screen. For excellent detailed instructions, go to Matt’s Wikimapia Blog at http://wikimapia.mattjonesblog.com/2006/09/15/how-to-1-adding-a-new-place/
You will also want to update your information at these search engines:
http://www.google.com - Google’s tools for increasing traffic to your web site can be found at Google webmaster Central. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/#utm_medium=et&utm_source=us-en-et-bizsol-0-finderB-all&utm_campaign=en . Go to http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl to add your web site to the Google index
Yahoo
http://www.search.yahoo.com - Yahoo’s tools are found at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/about/forsiteowners.html . You can submit your site directly to Yahoo by going to http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html . You’ll find several options there to choose from, according to your needs.
Live Search (formerly MSN)
http://www.live.com - To submit your site, go to http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com - “The best search engines piled into one” This metasearch engine searches for information on all the major search engines. Go to each individual search engine to update your listing.
Note: I am reposting this blog on the new site. I am very interested in knowing if your firm makes changes to your online information and what kind of traffic you are experiencing once you have a toll free tracking number on the mapping sites. Thanks! Toni