Wednesday 13 February 2008

Globrix

Another vertical property search engine enters the market. So we now have Nestoria , Zoomf and Globrix and hot on their heels, the property owl search portal.

Globrix have made some noise and obviously spent a fair amount on marketing. Not suprisingly given they have some heavy weight backers in the form of News International, who incidentally own half of Propertyfinder to name one of a few property interests. Anyway, they were advertising all over the tube (London underground system) on Friday last.

I have written about elements of the Zoomf system in the past and we have a good relationship with Nestoria so what do Globrix add to the mix. Well, I like their branding, but I have to ask what they are doing that is different? Both Nestoria and Zoomf have added to this space and continue to innovate and we are offering an entire property management system for our estate agent clients, so again, what do globrix do that would make me put all my estate agent clients through their system?

Well it is free, so that is a plus point and one we would be foolish to ignore. The advanced side navigation is good and quick and they are using infinite scroll for property listings (which we are using!). But watch this space to see how we have done it!! A good selection of property, which you would expect from the investment. It is also very quick, which really impresses me. (although see my earlier blog regarding kisses of death).

We like the map drag box search which we guess is linked through the google api. Not the same as the Zoomf draw box, but it is still a good quick feature and seems to be what the searching public uses.

Monetisation would appear to be the standard generate traffic and advertise on the site method, which I question in such a populated market space. But with deep pockets they can take time generating traffic.

Anyway, welcome Globrix.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

you give the impression that Globrix is special in being free. This is not the case since all property search engines, by definition are free to list. I am glad however that you highlighted the point that they are back by News International who are also financing Propertyfinder. I can imagine there are some people at propertyfinder who are none too happy...

Anonymous said...

As an estate agent, why would I invest my time and marketing spend in a property search engine? It’s FREE! I am therefore advertised on this site as long as I am on the top 2-3 UK property sites. The question is though, why would News have Propertyfinder and Globrix compete in this tight market?

Well, my thoughts are they are both very different sites, that offer an estate agent different services. Globrix isn’t going to offer an agent marketing support and advice, a free site won’t go to those lengths. Nothing of worth is free from my experience. Propertyfinder.com has been around for a while and are backed by a business in Australia that is a market leader, so they offer a lot of industry knowledge and insight, also as soon as I say to a potential vendor or landlord that I am on Sky, Virgin Media and all the sites they advertise my properties on, it’s a bit of a crowd pleaser. Globrix is slick, but looks fade and I just can’t see them working with me and my team. The main property sites will be the ones that can offer an estate agent support – property search engines, like Globrix and Nestoria, rely on these sites to exist! So I guess that’s why Globrix and propertyfinder can co-exist.

Also, Daily Mail General Trust own both FindaProperty and Primelocation, which are both pretty similar websites. They are competitors, they both need estate agents. I don’t get why Daily Mail would do this????

Anonymous said...

I think you are missng the point. Nestoria indexes other portals and not the agents directly. Indexing portals is a simple technical challenge but a business model that relies on portals allowing this in the long term - which is hardly likely. You need to look closely at what Globrix have done to see the real difference. They have actually indexed nearly every agent in the UK - this means thousands of small agencies and websites. They have twice the listings of zoomf and are second only to Rightmove in numbers of properties. I am a smallish agent and fully support Globrix. They are already generating significant traffic for me and they have only just got started. Agents are backing them on mass as they have both the technology, mindset, media backing and architecture to take on the portals. I think that you are underestimating the power of News Corp and the agent backing that they have. They have acheived more for us in 5 weeks than other start up search engines have acheived in 12 months.

Property Owl said...

Thanks for the comments, which has lead to a further blog with additional thoughts for comments:

1. Just how intelligent is the Globrix search?
2. how will the smaller agent optimise and push its way into the listings?
3. Will it delivery quality traffic?
4. What impact on agents?
5. great for estate agents potentially, but what about users?
6. Will they be satisfied with just ad revenue?
7. The industry overall.

This list is of course not exhaustive, but will hopefully prompt more constructive discussions.

offplanpropertyexchange said...

Our website www.offplanpropertyexchange.com has had a lot of traffic generated from this site