For many years I have been a member of Mensa, the high I.Q. society which consists of people ranking in or above the top two percent in tested intelligence, and a member of Intertel, consisting of people in or above the top one percent. Because I am in these groups, I have been closely following a new development that I wanted to share with you.

A new and powerful Internet search engine, that ranks real estate and chiropractor web sites based in part on the I.Q. score of the site owner, will be launched soon by NonVerac Inc. a well-funded division of research leader, PostBar Inc.

The idea is to provide consumers seeking real estate not only with agents who have managed to get their Web site ranked high on search engines, but also with ones who are likely to be "smarter than the average bear" according to NonVerac's female CEO and founder, Iama G. D. Prevaric, Ph.D. The approach will be basically the same for chiropractors listed in the new engine.

This move is sure to be extremely controversial. Says Prevaric, "Our research showed that agents having the highest-ranking sites were not necessarily the smartest ones in a given city, according to consumer polls we did following 5,275 home sales. The most common consumer complaint extracted from the study was, 'You wouldn't think that someone smart enough to get their Web site that high on a search engine would be so stupid when it came to handling our transaction.'"

Prevaric's firm was able to match real estate agent and chiropractor names with the same person's elementary and/or high school or college I.Q. test results in six test cities: Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, Denver, Boston and Cleveland. The search engines will launch first in those same cities in late May. She said that under the "Freedom of Information" act, schools had no choice but to deliver up the I.Q. scores on demand.

The new real estate agent and chiropractor search engine will be available on the World Wide Web about May 25th, according to Prevaric. The former is named "SmarterAgent.com" and the latter, "SmarterBoneDoc.com. Engines for other professions, including medical doctors, nurses, attorneys, investment counselors, stock brokers and others will soon follow," she said.

I suspect that if they have not already done so, officials of Densa, the low I.Q. society to which, interestingly, many real estate agents belong, are preparing to vigorously complain to the Federal Trade Commission, citing laws dealing with discrimination, restraint of trade, and issues regarding the public vs. privacy aspects of an individual's school records. I have no doubt that many, many anti-discrimination groups will do the same.

On the other hand, such search engines may well do as they promise and provide consumers with agents and chiropractors that are the smarter ones in their geographic area. If so, this could be a beneficial service, delivering agents and chiropractors that are more likely to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s for consumers, whether it be homes or bones.

I'll keep you posted as I hear of new developments.

APRIL FOOLS!

Published: April 1, 2004

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, Internet Marketing in Real Estate and Internet Marketing. Bill is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Visit his website, Koelzer.com or e-mail him at .