I’m a very casual domainer and have been buying some domains here and there over the last few years. One of the biggest mistakes I see new domainers make is buying domains with trademarked terms in them. I monitor NameJet for certain terms that drop, and have seen lots of obvious examples of trademark-ridden domains that have gone into auction at ridiculous prices. Do NOT be one of these people.

There’s obvious trademarks, but I fell into the not-so-obvious territory just a few months ago. This territory is real estate. I ended up picking up realtorsarasota.com for just under $500 in a NameJet auction for a friend of mine who is an actual Sarasota Realtor. Soon after I got cease and desist letter from the National Association of Realtors telling me to stop using the domain.

Since I had no legal ground to stand on, I had to redirect it to realtor.com until the domain name expires. A quick $500 down the drain. Similarly I have a friend in the industry who may end up losing his domain with the term “MLS” in it. That too is a trademark of the NAR.

When it comes to real estate domains, do not go after anything with “MLS” or “Realtor.” (Real estate, agent, homes, etc. are fair game since they’re generic terms.) About a year ago I saw therealtor.com dropping from SnapNames and the auction was already over $1000 – makes me feel sorry for whoever won that domain.

This lesson applies to most domain purchases. Before you spend a lot of money on a domain (through a  drop, private purchase, or new registration), be sure that it does not include a trademarked term. This is a lesson that diggdotus learned the hard way – Digg’s legal team forced them to change the domain because it included Digg’s trademark.

Some companies don’t go after domains that contain their trademarked term (like Google or Flickr), BUT they have every legal right to and might change their mind down the line. It’s best to avoid that situation all together.

The lesson here: check copyright.gov before you spend big money on a new domain.

If you want to learn more about copyright and trademark issues, check out Sarah Bird’s posts on Seomoz, here’s a good one to start with about Zappos.com.

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Last month Google started penalizing a number of real estate websites that had previously ranked well for competitive phrases in their respective cities. Two large networks (website providers) that had numerous sites penalized were Advanced Access and Real Estate Webmasters. The biggest reason seems to have been interlinked state directory pages filled with agent to agent reciprocal links.

Recently Matt & crew had sent out some warnings that suggested thin-content pages were going to get hit & there have been plenty of suggestions that search engines consider these agent to agent directories spammy.

Lot of agents call these “relocation guides” and try to justify them as useful, but their arguments are BS – these are nothing but useless (spammy) link pages that once upon a time helped you rank better – back when recips were all the rage. They provide zero value to the user. If you’re an agent who disagrees, check your logs. How many actual visitors have any of those pages referred to your site? You and Google both know this statistic (and you were probably helping them if you had Google Analytics installed).

The issue is that some of the sites that were hit were actually really good sites, other than having a relic of a spam directory attached to them. Hopefully they can get back on G’s good graces once they remove the directories – but who knows how long this G (tough) Love and its Special (SERP) Sauce for agents will last…

State pages on real estate sites was an easy target, but this is a sign of a larger trend – if you have lots of pages that are not “valuable” – ask yourself if it might be a good idea to eliminate them. What’s “valuable” is a whole another discussion. Google’s dominance and ability to guide a market to what their own perception of “valuable” might be, well, that’s an even lengthier discussion.

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This morning I was spammed by Shark Byte Media and their new project, LuxuryHomesofSarasota.com. I’ve never signed up for anything from these people and a huge pet peeve of mine is when I get unsolicited email. Especially when it’s marked “High Importance”, which is just too arrogant and annoying. Furthermore it took me only about 3 seconds to figure out that the copy on their pages is the same as 2 other realtors’ websites.

To recap: if you want to draw the ire of the web community, harvest a bunch of email addresses, spam them with a “high importance” header, and put up a site with copied content. The beauty of the web is that it’s so transparent – if you do anything like this, it’s bound to come back and Byte you in the rear.

I hope none of the “real” Sarasota realtors signs up for this thing. There are a number of great Sarasota realtors and brokereages that sell truly luxury homes, just don’t see them using this website.

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Real estate has long been a quasi-monopolistic industry. Real estate brokers have long controlled access to listing information – via the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) – and have effectively shut out non-brokers from sharing in this information, which has been one of their biggest weapons in the trade. This is rapidly changing. (The Department of Justice was one of the first hammers to this wall).

The current internet revolution, especially web 2.0, has created a channel for sharing and combining all types of data that has been previously locked in seperate databases or unavailable in any significant form to the average user. Zillow was the first major disruptor that gained traction with the public because it allowed anyone to see historical real estate data overlaid on a map – this mashup gave access to everyone, and while the data was not always accurate, it’s was a good first step. Zillow, while being a disruptor, still aimed to connect buyers and sellers with realtors (and make money with contextual advertising in the process).

Redfin is another animal altogether. The company is creating an open marketplace that strives to remove the realtor from the equation of buying and selling real estate entirely. Their first strides have been made on the buyer side by offering buyer-side rebates, but they are currently testing a seller-side model as well. This is a very radical approach, one that has made them plenty of enemies in the realtor community.

While I agree that the internet can bridge the gap between buyers and sellers much better by offering more accessible information, I don’t believe the role of realtors will ever be erased – only shifted. The same way E-trade demolished the inefficiencies that existed in stock trading by challenging the old-school brokereages, these new websites will open up access to real estate listings and general home values to anyone who cares to look. And while these new services will take away much of the existing broker power of controlling the MLS information, realtors, especially ones that buy and sell high end homes will still have a significant role to play in the buying and selling of properties.

Why? Because homes are complex and emotional investments and can never be effectively commoditized. The real professionals in the industry know this and have many competitive advantages that reach way past conventional spreadsheet data.

Realtors must position themselves not as the primary sources of home listing information, but as experts in the field that cannot be defined by quantiative measures. If you’re renting a desk at ReMax and are relying on the MLS to give you the edge, your days are numbered. If you know the ins and outs of zoning, have many contacts with private sellers, know all the reasons waterfront homes on Longboat Key are selling better than those on Siesta Key, and have first hand experience in high-end deals, your future is safe, as long as you understand how this new technology will help both you and your clients.

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