Would there be a duplicate content penalty? Nah.

Would Google give the near duplicate content little or no juice? Yep.

Will adding a lot of near duplicates dilute the first adopter's juice? Probably.

Will Google allow several pages all with very similar content to all rank well for "123 Oak St"? Probably not.

Cool plug-in. It'll be fun to watch how it plays out.

As I started to write my response to your post I saw Jim Duncan's comment, which pretty much sums it up. Hand wringing over SEO is something that entirely too many real estate professionals spend entirely too much time and, in some cases, entirely too much of their commission love on. Content is still King and when it comes to building a winning web/social media strategy, hyper-local is the only way to go. I am asked often for examples of real estate professionals who "get it" when it comest to localized web marketing - just like this comment thread, Jim Duncan is at the top of that list. Don't get me wrong, managing search efforts is an important part of a web strategy but if you're looking at an IDX solution or a blog plug-in to be the panacea to your web traffic issues, spend the $30 mo. printing some b&w flyers and go down to an apartment complex in search of first time buyer windshields.

I'll give DS some credit in saying that although they mention the possible SEO benefits in their literature, they don't stress it. If you look at past results of other built in IDX launches you'll see that the first person that operates the IDX gets immediate benefits but as more users get added that benefit is lowered exponentially. No matter what you do to try and avoid the duplicate content issue (which I know some other people are working on) as long as you have an IDX system that other people in the same area are using, you'll have duplicate content.

This is going to be very interesting over the next year as this plays out.

My best guess is that there will be some strong sites that can do very well in a broad sense right of the bat by taking advantage of the existing power of the site and clean structure. The difficulty over time for these sites may be trying to compete with very active niche (geographic or other) sites with people that are very active in producing compelling content.

For the little guy I think there is a real opportunity to focus on a small area of real expertise and use the relevant listings as one of the types of content offered to visitors.

Feels like an opportunity to dominate some neighborhoods/areas with very strong landing pages. In my experience listings offer an excellent opportunity to facilitate registration. and registration allows me to always have a pool of people to prospect and that's good!

If I were google...I would do everything I could to refer the expert and when everyone has the listings it will probably be the surrounding content that helps google decide.

I launched a site for a friend that used the LP plugin. I had 8 different results pages and 8 different details page. Google indexed 2,100 pages within 30 days. I thought this was in 3 months but it was actually a lot faster.) Better, I think I know why those pages designs were indexed and why the other page styles were not. Best, they were in either the #1 or #2 spot on Google, crushing Realtor.com, Zillow, etc...

This made me very happy.

I was curious about duplicate content so I analyzed the pages of all major competitors - after all, we all did have the same listing content and they were "authority" websites. Why were we crushing them? What was the difference?

That was easy to discover.

Our next step was to create a plugin that would take a keyword, for example "homes" and optimize the entire internal structure of the site automatically for SEO - think all tags, descriptions, internal linking, etc...optimizing for the name of the town + homes and boosting the value of similar pages.

Ok, that's as much as I'm giving away : ) except to say that we also have a way of adding non-duplicate keyword rich content that changes whenever the spiders visit. (This is especially important when we put up different sites in the same market.)

My partners and I are debating whether to enter the IDX playing field, or just keep our secrets for our own partners to dominate individual markets by optimizing a number of sites this way (yes, yes, on different server farms w/different ip addresses) and monopolizing the PPC space by running ads to those sites as well (all owned of course by different corporations with different credit cards, etc...)

The hilarious thing is that I'm not an SEO professional at all. I just read what a lot of people have said about "best practices" and then just tested the effects of each strategy as much as I could, and then used the wordpress plugin structure to do each one automatically but with flexibility to allow more testing and the use of different strategies by different agents. (I was really tired of SEO guys I knew 'speculating' with no data to back what they said up.)

Oh, @ United Realty of Texas, you want as many pages as possible indexed not only for visitors but because they can all link to your home page or other page you may want to optimize. When the listing "expires" but if it's still indexed by google, it's pretty easy to have a click to that page automatically redirect the visitor to another one. The secret here though is to first try and get the "Results" pages indexed. When this kind of page is indexed, the link will usually define a specific set of property criteria, so even when some listings disappear, new ones take their place. If the other SEO factors are in place, I think Google likes new content above all else.

Whoops. I shut up now.

Cheers!

My opinion on the IDX vs. Blogging "which generates more business" debate is that when people are browsing they want to use a great IDX solution and that is where 95% of their time will be spent. But, as soon as they think "Hmmmm...should I register, schedule an appointment, contact the agent" etc...then most WILL click and read the blog and about us page...or other pages to see if they can trust the agent. That's where blogging becomes valuable.

Who knows if PR is going to be a factor. Everything I hear these days is that PR has been devalued considerably in Google algorithm. It is just one of many factors that could go into, for lack of a better term, the SEO power of a site.

Jeff - thanks for the reference in your post.

Initially I thought the same way about indexable listings. In that once the market gets saturated it won’t be effective. The more we thought about them more we saw the diverse power of this. If an agent is looking to get every listing in the MLS indexed for their site it’s just not going to happen. Most agents don’t have enough PageRank, Google Juice, inbound links, reputation, etc for the search engines to spider all the listings in every city and then rank them high in the SERPs. Instead what agents should be doing is starting small and picking just a few key cities or communities and focusing on those. Those that are more focused with how they build their site architecture and combine listings with relevant content are going to be the ones that yield the best results.

Hey Justin-

So, if I read you right, you think PageRank will factor into potential SERP's if there are multiple editions running in the same markets?

Great insight...thanks for taking the time to stop by!

Selfishly, I hope PageRank is a factor... It'd be nice to get some benefit from having PR5 (not an incredible PR, but not bad for a real estate blog). Haven't really seen many places that PR makes much of a difference. In my little SEO mind PR is grossly over-rated.

I think Justin's point is a good one. Picking key cities / communities will be important.

I too have been beta testing the Diverse Solutions IDX plugin. I've had a boat load of pages indexed, and they rank very well in Google search results. More importantly, they've already caused the phone to ring, and registrations to increase.

Who knows what will happen when a bazillion other Phoenix area agents have the same tool.

As others have already mentioned, I think it will boil down to what you do with the tool that makes all the difference.

Give me a hammer and nails (the tools), and I can build a house. Give a skilled craftsman those same tools and see what they build.

I suspect the same will hold true for implementing an indexable IDX solution...

You guys ALL make some GREAT points. I don't know about a "bazillion" agents stepping up to actually pay for something but there WILL be a lot of content hitting the "streets."
Here in PHX, Jay's site will obviously rank very well because he does know how to swing a hammer and writes GREAT content.
I am gonna be pissed to see some of the clowns setting up 5000 pages with a title of a subdivision followed by the "homes for sale" in the same subdivision with just the code dropped in for their magical ranking to start helping their POS web site.
It might get interesting... :-)
Thanks Jeff, Jim, Jay etc. This is good stuff and will be fun to watch

Good point Nick. Since there is a cost involved, many agents will not partake. Some more will likely not understand that if they install an indexable IDX solution today, they will not automagically have 41,000 Phoenix area listings indexed tomorrow.

Some will buy in, give the plugin a week, and proclaim "it doesn't work". Those that do buy in and carefully craft content and navigation around the listings will be pleased. IMO.

Jay does know how to swing a hammer, evidenced by the online mansion he has built :)

Thanks Jeff. It's getting there, still have a long way to go. It's a marathon, not a sprint...

Jeff, Bulls eye on this post, followed by Jim splitting the arrow in "Robin Hood" fashion with his comment. "Good, useful, pertinent and informative content" remains King.

Jeff - This is what I wrote on my blog this morning:

What is the value of listing data when it is commoditized to the point of saturation? From an SEO standpoint, I suspect that the value will be minimal. Thus, I hope and suspect that the greatest consequence will be a return to what I have strived for for over five years – producing good, useful, pertinent and informative content.

Agreed 110% Jim...at the end of the day it comes down to 'producing good, useful, pertinent and informative content'.

Coupled with the novel and insightful content/opinion that comes from your head, utilizing an indexable IDX would seem to be a wonderful compliment...

I remain curious about the Google's opinion - will the IDX data be deemed "duplicate data" and thereby penalize those using it?

(I hope not, as I've been beta-testing the DS plugin for the last month and I *love* it)

There doesn't seem to be any penalty. In fact if a "property details" page on your website doesn't have a lot of non-property duplicate content (which Zillow, etc... often seem to have) then it can rank higher then theirs. It helps if your domain is aged. New domains seem to get a lot less benefit from the dsIDXpress plugin, for example. I don't know how long this will last however. The big "authority" domains are just running up their SEO advantages. We are shifting a lot of our focus to innovative positioning, programs, and content - and social media strategies. At some point everyone has access to tons of information, and what is left is to hire someone they like and trust - the friendly, local expert.