Google is Our Friend – Yours, Too

It’s not hard to come across ForSaleByOwner.com: our name and our web address pretty much say it all. As Google tightens its search algorithms, that helps us -- and you.

Thanks to our deep well of features, how-to’s, tools and listings. ForSaleByOwner.com already has the gravitational pull to be top ranked in by all search engines for all ‘by owner’ keywords and phrases. 

Still,  it has been frustrating to watch Google, one of the largest and ostensibly one of the most sophisticated companies in the world, supposedly run by some of the smartest people in the world,  react so slowly those gaming its search systems.

Google finally decided to swat away ‘content farms’ that churn ‘stories’ that are little more than the day’s most popular search terms swirled with a few prepositions and verbs.

Justin, our search guru, explains why our competitors with cutesy names are more likely to be hurt by Google’s more stringent standards: Google rewards links. ForSaleByOwner.com has more than 4 million links drawing others to our site.

Google examines the value of those links according to page rank and other factors. We’ve got pretty impressive linkers in our lineup – just look at our press coverage, for instance. 

ForSaleByOwner.com gets over 600,000 visits from search engines monthly. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more visits you get from search, the higher you rank in search, so the more visits you get. But, it works for us because we’re the real deal.

All of this helps our customers because it fulfills our promise to bring you as many buyers as possible. 

Let the FSBO fur fly: Google’s algorithms recognize the real thing when they see it.

Image courtesy of Morguefile contributor hotblack.

Searching Tips and Tricks

We are always looking on ways to improve search. We get many suggestions regarding different terms and ways people would like to search through the listings. You requested and we listened. Here is a helpful list of ways to search through our listings that you might not have known about.

1. Searching by State/Province
You can easily search by State or Province on our site. Just type the State/Province in the location field and hit search. Note that some areas (i.e. New York City) have the same name for the city and state. If you type in just "New York" you will be shown the results for New York City. If you want to search the state, simply type "New York State" in the location field.



2. Open Houses
If you are planning to visit an area and want to see if there will be open houses in there, use the "Sort by Open House" functionality. This will place all of the properties that have an open house at the top of the results.



3. New Listings
Similar to the open house capabilities mentioned above, you can also sort by "New". This will place all new listings at the top of the search results.

Hopefully these tips and tricks will make finding your next home easy using ForSaleByOwner.com. If you have any comments or suggestions please let us know as we continuously strive to improve our search.