Google Now Does Real Estate Searches in Maps: We're Not Impressed
Today Google Maps adds Real Estate searches to growing list of customized map query options available through the popular service. Google's addition might be seen as a shot across the bow of already established real estate sites such as Trulia and Zillow. But those sites can relax, for now at least, because Google's real estate offerings are far from stellar.
In a brief look at the Google Maps Real Estate option I found that my search results only contained basic listing information such as price, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms. Zillow has Google beat hands down with its estimated value of homes, pricing and value history, and sometimes links to Microsoft Virtual Earth's Bird's Eye View of homes (which blows Google's aerial imagery out of the water).
(click image for larger view)
You can access these listings by performing a standard search and then clicking the "Show search options" link next to the Search Maps button. Under the "Restrict results to:" drop-down menu, simply choose "Real Estate" and you'll see a bunch of push pins representing various listings.(see top image)
You can also toggle between "Text View" and "Map View" and refine your results by a certain price range, and number of bathrooms and/or bedrooms. According to the unofficial Google blog called Google Operating System Blog, the search results are gathered "by indexing feeds from real estate sites," so it's not quite an exact science. For instance, I did a cursory search of the neighborhood in Minneapolis where I just sold my house and found very few listings nearby. This is odd, because I know there are a lot of homes listed within just a few blocks of my former house.
Thanks to the open API that Google Maps uses, this sort of feature isn't all that new. In fact, Trulia pretty much does all this and more, allowing for more robust search parameters and integrating Google Maps' Street View feature quite nicely. Still, it's nice to see Google Maps adding features like this at the granular level in the hopes that you'll be able to find everything you need in one fell swoop.
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Any real estate professional will tell you Zillow real estate values are not worthy of any consideration. I'm glad to see there is competition out there - maybe we'll see something worth the effort blossom from this.