Harcourts listings added to new Google Maps search

 Media Release 

Harcourts listings added to new Google Maps search

22 July 2009: Harcourts' ongoing leadership in the real estate sector has been further reinforced with its residential property listings now being available via the new Google Maps’ search feature.

As Harcourts Chief Technology Officer Jason Wills explains Google’s new real estate search feature, which makes real estate companies’ residential property listings available within Google Maps, is an evolution of Google Base, which Harcourts has been involved with for more than a year.

Harcourts has a long association with Google, having been the first real estate group in New Zealand to add Google Maps to our own website to enable people to pinpoint the location of Harcourts listings.

“Last year we began assisting them with the development of their Google Base directory, by supplying them with our property listings for that, and more recently we’ve been co-operating on the new Google Maps initiative,” he says. “After more than a year it’s exciting to see it all come to fruition and for residential properties Harcourts is marketing either for sale or rent to be searchable via Google Maps, which is an extremely popular site in New Zealand.” 

Mr Wills says that according to Comscore more than 56% of all internet searches on “real estate” and related terms are conducted on Google and their partner sites. 

“So to ensure our clients' properties have maximum exposure and that and potential buyers or renters searching online have every available option to find Harcourts' listings it is vital for us to be on board with Google’s new initiatives given the prevalence of Google sites in New Zealand.”

“Including Google Maps on our websites has definitely proven to be a successful addition to our online offering for clients and in return I am sure that having our listings available via Google Maps will be good for both our clients and potential clients, while the enquiries that result will obviously be of benefit to our team.” 

Mr Wills says Harcourts prides itself on being an industry-leading, including in terms of introducing new systems and products it has developed and in being an early adopter of others’ technology.

“We see our investment in real estate technology as imperative to provide the public and our team with the best tools possible to ensure their real estate experience is productive and successful.”

About Google Maps new real estate search feature

The new real estate search feature recently launched by Google in New Zealand (http://maps.google.co.nz/realestate) and Australia allows real estate companies to upload their listings to Google Maps for free and in turn allows visitors to look for properties for sale or rent in a city or suburb, and to refine that search by price, property type, bedrooms, bathrooms and parking.   Maps automatically update with relevant listings when panned or zoomed to another area or when the search criteria is changed

ENDS

© Scoop Media