The search engine Google has created quite a controversy on the Internet within the past several days. Throughout this last week, and up to and including the time of me publishing this article, something very unexpected happens when you do a Google search under the keyword "failure." When doing a keyword search under this term, the #1 result in their search engine has been a link to the biography of President George Bush on the White House website.

Now if instead when doing your search you selected Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button rather than their "Google Search" button when doing this search, you'd then be taken directly to the President's biography page on the White House website.

Now I can't say with certainty that this has been created intentionally by someone at Google, but I also recognize that the mathematical probabilities against this happening purely by random chance must be quite astronomical. Whatever the case I would imagine that some of Google's more influential shareholders will soon be talking to people within the company and voicing their own opinions about whether or not this is good for business.

Political opinions are very polarized today in America. And as an agent doing business you really must watch yourself in expressing these opinions around your clients and prospects. Unless you know for sure that one of your clients or prospects agrees with your political point of view, it's probably better just to keep your views to yourself. And at this point you might even have many political views in common with the person you're working with, but one of your views that you think may be inconsequential to your relationship with the person could be one that they differ with you on considerably. And you voicing your opinion on what you thought was just a small matter could immediately change their opinion of you.

So in getting back to what I mentioned about Google, why they would leave these search engine results exactly the same for days and maybe even weeks is beyond my comprehension. I mean why run the risk of offending some people and have them decide to simply start doing their searches on another search engine instead? (You may remember last year when the lead singer of the band The Dixie Chicks made some rather strong comments about President Bush. As a result of these comments their music was banned on radio stations all across the country, and the sales of their CDs suffered.)

And as we get to the heart of the matter, this really has very little to do with anyone within the company's political opinion. But it has everything to do with maximizing the success of a business.

Even if the search engine results for the word "failure" listed the White House biography page for former President Bill Clinton, this would be a bad business move. I mean why would a company want to risk alienating 40-50 percent of the population from their business? Would you as an agent even consider sending out a mailer to your clients and prospects that directly insulted the members of one of our two major political parties? In all honesty, there are much better ways for you to build rapport with people and increase the probability that a higher percentage of them will want to do business with you.

And as we're relating this to your business, it's very important for you as an agent to completely walk your talk and constantly present the best image imaginable of yourself to your people. You want to make sure that the message you continually send to your prospects through your marketing materials is congruent in telling them who you are and why they should hire you. This is one reason why I recommend sending marketing materials that educate and inform your people about things they'll want to know before entering into and closing their next real estate transaction. Things like the difference between title insurance coverage with a standard title policy versus with an extended one, how to properly price their property when putting it on the market, and what they can expect in terms of closing costs.

When you provide people with information that is both helpful and informative to them, you begin to establish a relationship with them as an expert consultant, even though they may never have met you.

And this certainly beats the heck out of the agent who continually brags in their marketing pieces about how great they are.

So make sure that your marketing pieces define clearly to your prospects what kind of real estate you specialize in. As an example of where agents can go wrong in this arena, I just received another postcard from a husband and wife real estate team who sell single family homes in the area I live in. The general area I live in is known for its wineries, but the wineries are actually miles away from me. But still these agents continue to send me postcards with their photo superimposed over acres of grapes growing in a vineyard. And this photo covers the entire side of a 6" X 9" postcard.

Now if I was in the market to buy a winery, I might be inclined to give them a call. But the main visual message on their postcards conveys to me that they specialize in selling wineries or properties with plenty of extra land for grapes, which has nothing to do with selling normal single family homes in this area. And as a result, there are other agents I would call before these people when I have a need to buy or sell a single family home. This is despite the fact that the husband and wife look like intelligent, polished, professional people in their photo. (But now when I look at the flip side of the card, it has a blurred photo of a home they've sold -- the only photo on that side of the card and the main focus of the reader's attention -- which is now leading me towards a more negative impression about their professionalism.)

So make sure that your marketing pieces clearly reflect the type of real estate you specialize in, and the type of image you want people to have of you.

And as far as Google is concerned, they're at the top of the search engine mountain right now. They have truly become the darling of the search engine arena, but any of us who have been around the Internet for ten years or more remember all the companies who once had a solid presence in the search engine arena, only to have seen it fade away. And with consumers being so fickle nowadays, intelligent business people need to be focused on how to keep people interested in their products and services, not in running the risk of having them want to utilize their competitors instead.

So you'll want to make sure that you're always congruent in the message you're sending out to your people, and constantly be sending them the all-important message that you're the first person they'll want to call whenever they have a real estate need.