There's nothing to stop a business putting up a Web site with a cool URL, and seeing if it attracts some business. That's the kind of entrepreneurial that the Internet is famous for. But a closer look may reveal interesting and unexpected tidbits - that some companies are in the business of simply referring traffic to other vendors.

That could be the case with a Web site called Multiplelisting.com.

The site is lean in design and doesn't bother with a splash page proclaiming who Multiplelisting is and why you have come to the right place. In fact, the site has no content of its own. Instead, there is a simple menu on the left, and every time you click on it, it takes you to a framed partner's Web site.

The front page opens to a frame, taking visitors directly to a housing search function, courtesy of Homes.com. Once there, you can't click your way back to Multiplelisting.com. You'll have to go to your browser, drop down the menu and click back on Multiplelisting.com, or key the URL into your browser. Why? You're in a frame, and that's easy to forget.

When you click on List a Home, it takes you not to a home listing template, but to an unexpected destination - HomeGain. Known for putting buyers and real estate agents together as a online referral network, HomeGain is a licensed broker on a national scale. As a licensed broker, there is no reason why it shouldn't take listings, but via this navigation, there's no place to list a home. Instead, you are taken to a HomeGain framed page which suggests that you find the "perfect agent."

Other pages follow in a similar fashion. Some pages, such as the Mortgage links, are framed by LinkExchange, which goes to Microsoft's bCentral - small business solutions site. Mulitplelisting.com also links to LinkExchange, a banner ad program that puts participants into directories.

Curiosity aroused, I kept investigating. On at least one search engine, Google.com, Multiplelisting.com advertisers itself as an Owners.com affiliate. The largest of the FSBO sites, Owners.com declared that it was ceasing operations in May, 2001, but its site appears to still be active.

As affiliates, the two sites have an unsettling common trait - no way to get anybody on the phone. At Owners.com there is no contact information except pr@owners.com. Multiplelisting.com doesn't give any phone numbers either. In fact, the only contact I could find for information was info@multiplelisting.com. I contacted both with frustrating results.

Apparently Owners.com was bought from Homebytes.com by a mystery man, Steve. Steve didn't want to talk to me, and the only way I found him was on the trusty Network Solutions site, where you can find out who the registrants are for domain names. But the e-mail listed for Steve as the registrar didn't give his true name. Steve Udel was an abbreviation, I guessed, based on flirtations I've had with the romance languages, which include a little German. Tracking him down wasn't hard, and I e-mailed him several times.

Steve didn't seem to appreciate the scrutiny and went so far as to call me to let me know that I wasn't showing "respect" for his position. He said he was trying to operate in "stealth mode as we finalize very significant partnership agreements." My questions included asking what Owners' relationship with Multiplelisting.com was, and I asked his last name, which he refused to tell me. Again, it wasn't hard to find that out. I just e-mailed former Owners.com Hans Koch and asked who Steve was, and he told me - Steve Udelson. They've talked on the phone a few times, said Koch.

I always wonder why when a business owner doesn't want me to know who he/she is. It would certainly be simple enough to just say, "Blanche, I'm Steve Jobs (Steve Forbes, Steve Reeves, Steve Canyon) and we've got some things in progress. If you will be patient, I'll promise you a story."

The prospect of a story would have been enough to keep me on sit-stay for a quite a little while, but hiding easy-to-find facts only prompts me to keep digging.

Network Solutions also led me to find out more about Multiplelisting.com, where I encountered more dead-ends.

Multiplelisting.com is registered to Integrated Technology, an Oregon firm. The administrative/technical/billing contact is Jim Lustgarten. According to Integrated Technology's Web site, ITech provides high speed Internet access to multi-family properties with a product called Fastwire. If it is the same guy, Lustgarten is or was a director of computing services at the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon.

What's a broadband company doing referring homebuyers and sellers to Homes.com and HomeGain?

Lustgarten didn't respond to my call or e-mail either.

At last, HomeGain came through with an answer. "Our connection with Multiplelisting.com is that they send us consumer leads for full-service HomeGain agents from their web site," says Mark Marymee, spokesperson for HomeGain. "It's our Agent Evaluator service."

"As far as I know, we're not paying for anything," says Darin Scott, spokesperson for Homes.com.

That's all? All this secrecy over a portal?

That much was already obvious, but maybe the far-reaching implications are not.

Lustgarten has figured out how to do what Yahoo!, Homestore, and most other sites on the Web do - divert people to a limited directory of advertisers. The twist is that he has figured out a low-cost way to do it. The advertisers are the content.

The question is, why is he doing it without getting paid? There is an e-mail alert, so maybe this is a slick way to collect e-mail leads, but if so, where are they going?

And all it took was a good domain name and a little skill in html to pull it off.

Published: December 20, 2001

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