If you are an agent you have been told you need a website. You have also been told that your website needs to have a search function with a comprehensive MLS' data feed. While these two statements might be true, most IDX software vendors are providing nothing of value to their paying customers (the agents). IDX is a huge industry that's been built upon agents not knowing any better. IDX is not what it seems to be.

I love that IDX providers are still hyping map-based search within their offerings. Is this 2005? While it was a neat feature 13 years ago, it was never all that useful. This is probably why Google dropped this feature after two years of mashing up listings and maps. It's time for IDX to sunset that feature but they probably won’. When speed matters there's nothing like displaying a bloated map that takes up too much screen real estate. Okay, enough of this rant. Let’s get into some basics and touch upon a common misconception.

Your website is the last place prospective buyers are searching or finding a listing on. With the current state of IDX solutions, your site will not outrank top sites like Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Trulia.com etc. This is due to several reasons but I want to address a couple of factors. Let's dig in by stating the obvious... MLS doesn't require these search sites to link back to the source of the listing. In the real world, the real estate agents MLS listing is the "source." If it weren't for the agent's efforts the listing would not be on the Internet, therefore they are the source. None of these 3rd party real estate search sites are giving the source "robot worthy" credit and they should. How do I know this?  It's pretty simple. If they were giving proper backlink credit search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go etc. would be able to figure this out and the source would be listed as one of the top results. It's ironic because MLS requires 3rd party sites to give credit, but it contains zero link juice value. They require the brokerage name, agent name and a phone number. This is the web, how about a link? I am fine with third-party sites "burying credit" by placing the credit in a rarely noticed on-page location, but I believe all third-party sites should link to the source regardless. This is partly the fault of MLS' and really something the National Association of Realtors (NAR) should require when they ink these syndication partnerships. NAR is to blame. They recently updated IDX rules but nobody on the committee was smart enough to include the obvious to regain control.  Every listing pulled from MLS should have an 'anchor text' with the property address with the agent name and brokerage being the source. This can be done easily since search engines use structured data among other things to make search better for the end user. Search engines really need to focus more on making real estate search better. They can do this by finding the source.

With the current state of IDX, any listing posted on your website is nothing more than something Google and other real estate search sites consider to be unoriginal duplicate data /content for lack of better terminology. Search engines like unique content but your content is anything but unique when everyone is displaying the same data from shitty IDX providers.  

So how are IDX providers ripping Realtors and Agents off? Well, if the point of having MLS fed listings on your site is to find new online buyer prospects this will never happen. IDX are providers giving you access to their 'window' with a little customization to give you false hope. The little customization they allow is complete shit. Ninety-eight percent of all IDX providers are hosting your IDX. This means you have little to no control over how the listing data is displayed and the majority of your states MLS' listings are not being indexed by the search engines. If you want to test the approximate number of pages your site Google has indexed head over to Google and use the following search function operator in the address bar... 'site:domain.com' without the quotes. If you look at the results you will see small gray font telling you the number of 'results' indexed and how many seconds it took the search engine to return these results.  To calculate how many IDX fed listings your site has indexed simply subtract the number of 'static' pages your website has (ie. domain.com/about/ would be 1 page). Go to your MLS and do a full search to see how many 'active' listings it has right now. My states MLS currently has 31,972 listings that are either new, active, price change, back on market, extended, reactivated or contingent. I did not count listings with 'under agreement' status. In theory, in this example, a website should have around ~30,000 active listing pages indexed on the search engine. In doing research for this post, I looked at the example sites on many popular IDX providers and I didn't come across a single website example with over 1000 indexed pages. Most had few indexed pages which is a pathetic disgrace for the amount of money they charge each month. 

If you want a solution that gives the agent the link juice and power do not pay for wordpress plugins or hosting services. Ask you MLS for direct feed access and they will provide some solutions.

I run a brokerage and we also provide limited service entry-only listings via InstaMLS.com in MA and NH