Hey Mike,
It is a perplexing issue. Of course the ILS's must "own" the keywords, and likely keyword purchase IS their highest operating expense.

The whole premise of the magazines and the ILS structure is to provide a value platform for the prospect renter to better and easier find a suitable apartment. And that whole function works best when everyone subscribes to that type of advertising/marketing, meaning the apartment operator, the ILS and the prospect.

So, which circles back to your original question, what happens when the savvy apartment marketer decides, finally, that it IS important to show up on a Google Search Ranking, and starts buying Adwords, they, by design are now competing with every ILS on Adwords and Google Page Ranking.

To me, this is no different than the early thinking by Search Engines (Pre-Google) that wanted to keep you on their site. Google comes along, and reinvents Search, literally, and wants to get folks off their site as quickly as possible, the point being the ILS's want the prospect to stay in their corral

That's a really interesting thought, Daisy ... thanks for the feedback. So you'd be willing to pay to come up in search results within the listings on the ILS? I'm sure this is a trend we'll see soon.

I guess my question is, why not pay Google to come up ahead of the ILSs for some of those same search terms, and avoid paying double the toll? I'm not suggesting you stop advertising with the ILSs, but it seems like you might get more exposure if you spent those additional dollars on Google, rather than limiting yourself to only one or a couple vertical search sites.

Personally, I'd also like to see the option to pay for relevant anchor text links within ILS ads -- let them transfer some of their search authority to their advertisers' property sites.

Thanks, Daisy!

Thanks, Eric.

So are you of the opinion that ILSs shouldn't be advertising against the company and community names of their clients? Do you know of any apartment operators that are restricting this practice?

It's all a very intriguing conversation to me ... trying to understand how others see this issue.

I've not used any of Google's pay-per-click advertising.

However, I have brought it up to some of the more popular ILS's, that I would be WILLING to pay to come up FIRST in a certain search on certain words. They are always hounding me on paying some ridiculous amount for the cover of their magazine. I've always told them I am not willing to spend that kind of money on a cover, but would be willing to spend that kind of a money on a search word on their website. So far, none of the ILS's charge for search words on their websites, but they ARE talking about it.

Mike, You raise a great point, in that the very folks you are paying to advertise/market your apartments, the ILS's ARE competing with your community on keywords, be it Adwords or organic,

Are you using Google AdWords and other pay-per-click advertising networks? If so, on what types of keyword phrases are you spending? Have they been successful for you?

If competitors are buying ads on keyword phrases for your brand, how are you handling it? If ILSs are buying ads on the keyword phrases for your brand, are you OK with this or do you take issue?