Google penalizes Realtor sites as a warning to the industry.

Last month, Google penalized Realtor websites from Advanced Access, RealEstateWebmasters.com, and a couple of other providers as well. According to Matt Cutts from Google's spam team this was a "shot across the bow" to the real estate website industry to warn that extensive reciprocal linking is not acceptable to Google. This was a manually applied penalty and not something (at this point) that happened algorithmically.

Why is extensive reciprocal linking not acceptable? Because it works - and causes individual Realtor sites to rank well for real estate related keywords and Google would rather not have individual Realtor websites ranking for general "my city real estate" keywords.

Google has always made ajustments where necessary to include or exclude sites in order to have the results presented that it deems appropriate. Google deemed many years ago that it is OK for Realtor sites to rank for "Realtor" keywords but Google would really rather have a different type of website ranking for "real estate" keywords.

The earliest attempt by Google to shape the "real estate" keyword results that I remember occurred around the turn of the century. Google used to give a lot of "weight" to a site if it was listed in the Open Directory Project and when this became widely known Realtors or their webmasters tripped over themselves to list their websites. It worked well and Realtor websites ranked well in Google of "real estate" keywords.

Google's response to this was to change the Page Rank all of the "city real estate" directory pages at the Open Directory Project. Where these pages all had a PR of 3 to 5 previously, they were all changed to PR0 which reduced the ranking benefit and caused Realtor websites to drop in rank for "real estate" keyword searches. At the same time, the caetgories for larger real estate authority sites retained theit PR resulting in these sites increasing in rank in Google at the expense of Realtor sites.

The second major attack on Realtor websites began back in the fall of 2003 with the famous "Florida" update where the majority of Realtor websites in competitive market areas dropped dramatically in rank to be replaced by directory-type "authority" sites. This change in Google's ranking was keyword specific and geographic specific - it was applied to a list of keywords in combination with geographic names. Some cities were not on the original list and were unaffected initially. More were added in the weeks that followed. Some areas actually avoided the "Florida" update altogther - at least for "real estate" keywords. It seems Google overlooked some City names altogether.

As soon as the Realtor web design industry discovered that the "authority" sites that replaced their Realtor sites in Google's results were little more than directories with lots of links pointing at them - the Realtor website designers included large directories organized in different categories within their own sites and set about aggressively trading links.

This strategy worked (depending on the quality of the incoming links) and in the last few years Realtor websites have slowly been reclaiming some of the good "real estate" rankings enjoyed by Realtor websites prior to the fall of 2003. That strategy has now been rendered obsolete or at least extremely risky with Google's recent penalties. Most of the sites penalized removed all of their directory pages, filed re-inclusion requests and many have regained their previous rankings.

The problem is, that these reclaimed rankings will only be temporary. Now that these websites have removed all of their outgoing previously-traded links, their former partners will be doing the same in return. When Google gets around to factoring the new lack of incoming links into the rankings several months from now - these websites will drop once again.

Google will be happy - many Realtor websites will once again be absent from "real estate" rankings. Realtors on the other hand need to be looking to the future and trying to figure out how they will get their name out in front of those searching the web for "city real estate" keywords.

Some seem to think that social networking and blog communities may be the answer and it may be in part - for Realtors who are willing to devote large amounts of time and energy into adding fresh commentary and content. You see, this solution largely removes the ranking onus from the webmaster and puts it onto the Realtor - which is not the reason Realtors hire webmasters / realtor website designers in the first place. Most Realtors would rather be toe-to-toe with buyers and sellers than sitting in front of a computer screen trying to think of something to say.

For those that do not find an attraction in social networking and blogging, you may want to explore being listed within the authority-type sites that Google seems to like for "real estate" keywords. In many cases it is possible to have an individual presence for your market area within such authority sites so a web page promoting you and/or linking to your main website is found in Google when someone searches for "yourcity real estate". This solution frees you from the computer and gives you more face time with real clients.