Saw this on Facebook today and got my wheels turning. I posted this on a tech group on Facebook and thought I'd repost it here.

Suppose a consumer is searching for homes and happened to be on a Remax site for no particular reason, and clicked a few Remax links. But then went to Google to search for homes for sale. Would Google take their past history of clicking Remax links and show them Remax results more prominently than others? (I am just picking Remax as an example.)

This is somewhat scary on many levels; not just for business but for information in general- on a global scale... I don't like having my search results "filtered" by what some algorithm or digital gatekeeper thinks is "most relevant to ME..." Is it ideal to keep people stuck in their narrow vision of things "they like" vs. what they may NEED to see? This video is worth looking at.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA

I watched it. Amazing how they are controlling what we are exposed to. Thought provoking video. Thank you for posting.

I think it would be fun to have all of us here in this group do a search - using the exact same term - and post a screen shot of what results are returned.

It is actually great news for Realtors - and no change from the earliest days of the WWW. Right from the beginning, one of the main reasons why prospects contact a Realtor after searching for homes on the web is because they believe the Realtor may know about more homes than what their searches came up with. They are afraid of missing something. They want to know about ALL the available properties.

Most buyers have eyes that are bigger than their pocketbooks so when their searches don't come up with properties that match their expectations their response is not "perhaps I am being unrealistic" but "I must not be seeing all the homes available".

The internet itself is the new gatekkeeper of information and Realtors still have the key.

The more people become aware of this the better for Realtors!

I think it will be great for local agents with national franchises.

I have found this looking up my own sites different results based on if I'm on public wifi vs home.

One agent friend of mine claimed his web site had moved up to page one in his area in just a few weeks and when I search for it I could not find his site.

The latest news.... http://searchengineland.com/googles-results-get-more-personal-with-search-plus-your-world-107285

They have been doing this from the start with google ads so it is no wonder they are doing it with the searches.

Google has been doing this for quite some time, particularly so if you are signed it to a google account (i.e. youtube, gmail) while browsing. As it evolves and weighs more social media metrics (what you 'liked' on FB, what you tweeted, etc.) then it will get way more personal.

Actually is a good move, search engine should users friendly and the ultimate purpose is to help you find what you are looking!!!