Google Blog Search

November 7, 2005

Google is working on a new search engine designed specifically for Weblogs (Blogs). It is currently in Beta testing (this means it may still have some bugs or tweaking to be done before it satisfies the designers that it works as intended). It is found at www.google.com/blogsearch. When I do a search on Virginia Real Estate or Northern Virginia Real Estate, guess who is at the top of the first page? If you answered the "Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide" you would be correct. The recognition for all our work and time put into this is humbling and appreciated. My friend Jim Duncan, real estate blogging from Charlottesville, Virginia also gets top billing in the Virginia Real Estate search.

Why Blog? Blogging is an extremely powerful tool to reach people that a vanilla Website doesn't. It is a way to express our thoughts, opinions and values to a wide (as in global) community. It is not only self expression, it is a constantly evolving advertisement about our business. People that follow our Blog get to know us as real people (not just another real estate agent or agents) that no other medium can provide.

We also blog to promote our clients and their properties. It is value added advertisement that reaches more people than any print advertising can. And, we can track page views in real time.

We inaugurated our Blog on March 25, 2005. Recognition has grown from a few unique visitors a month to over 1,000 unique visitors per month. Our short term goal: 10,000 unique visitors per month. How can we do this? By keeping content current. For example, every time I post an article on the "Bubble", page views triple overnight. Blogging is hard work. It is time consuming. It needs to be thoughtful. It also serves as a creative outlet that can feed on itself. Blogging is simple technology that we use to add value to our business and clients.

A powerful medium when used appropriately can yield real results! Thanks to all the real estate bloggers that found us and are thoughtful to add links to the "Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide."

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