Wednesday, September 23, 2009
My First IFRAME, and it wasn't for Real Estate
I know IFRAMES gets used alot in Real Estate to display MLS listings, but I opted for a direct data feed with mine, so I never used IFRAMES for Real Estate Listings. Another opportunity came up for one of my other websites when a local paper asked if there was a way they could display trivia quizzes from another site that Innovative Ambitions owns. I thought of IFRAMES and went to work to see what I could come up with. This is just a rough first pass test, but let's see what it looks like. Here's a try at displaying one of our recent popular quizzes: Autumn Songs.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Even Google isn't perfect
Well, as I posted previously, my clients Real Estate website was dropped from the Google index early in 2008. The site had been hacked and had some blackhat SEO stuff added. I didn't catch it for a month or 2, then spent a couple more fixing and requesting reconsideration with Google. The pages went back into the index, and all was well. The clients site started coming up 1st for searches on "Remerica Somerset Realty". Case closed. Or so I thought.
Then late last year, or early this year, I noted something else. All the images at remericasomersetrealty.com had been dropped from the google image search index. Or at least thats all I can figure. Prior to the hack last spring the images from the site could be found in Google image search.
My assumption is that its not an issue with the Google algorythym, but rather with the Google re-inclusion process. I can't be sure, but when you have a site whose url is remericasomersetrealty.com, and it says "Remerica Somerset Realty" in the page title of the front page, and the upper left corner of every page on the site has an image whose filename is "remerica_somerset_realty.jpg" and the alt tag says "Remerica Somerset Realty" and the text on the actual image says "Remerica Somerset Realty", and the image shows up nowhere in Goggle image search results, but the site still shows up #1 for "Remerica Somerset Realty" in Google standard search, then I'd say that there's a relavency issue with this image search result, especially when you look at the other image search results that come up. And alot of them page 1 are nothing to write home about.
To be fair though, the Google system is extremely huge and dynamic, and everything can't possibly be fixed manually so I don't really fault Google. I just wish I could find a way to get my images back in the Google image search index. There's a process, and I've written them twice in the last 4 months, and been given no timeframe on how fast these requests get considered. :)
Then late last year, or early this year, I noted something else. All the images at remericasomersetrealty.com had been dropped from the google image search index. Or at least thats all I can figure. Prior to the hack last spring the images from the site could be found in Google image search.
My assumption is that its not an issue with the Google algorythym, but rather with the Google re-inclusion process. I can't be sure, but when you have a site whose url is remericasomersetrealty.com, and it says "Remerica Somerset Realty" in the page title of the front page, and the upper left corner of every page on the site has an image whose filename is "remerica_somerset_realty.jpg" and the alt tag says "Remerica Somerset Realty" and the text on the actual image says "Remerica Somerset Realty", and the image shows up nowhere in Goggle image search results, but the site still shows up #1 for "Remerica Somerset Realty" in Google standard search, then I'd say that there's a relavency issue with this image search result, especially when you look at the other image search results that come up. And alot of them page 1 are nothing to write home about.
To be fair though, the Google system is extremely huge and dynamic, and everything can't possibly be fixed manually so I don't really fault Google. I just wish I could find a way to get my images back in the Google image search index. There's a process, and I've written them twice in the last 4 months, and been given no timeframe on how fast these requests get considered. :)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Interesting article and map in Zillow on home value changes
There's an article on Zillow that includes a map and shows the year over year housing value change using colored diamonds to allow you to get a really clear picture nation wide. No surprise to anyone keeping up. Florida, California, and the east coast appear hit the hardest (I.e values down) with a few down pockets around Detroit, Chicago, Green Bay and Minneapolis also down 13 to 20%, and Ann Arbor Michigan being hit especially hard. Prices across the heartland and mid south appear to have held value pretty well. How does that expression go? Our strength is in the heartland, or something like that.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Balloon or no Ballon, Refinancing your House might be worth it
I just finished refinnancing my house and it turned out quite well. The main reason that I did it was that I was on a 7 year ballloon that was coming up next year. For those of you that are as lacking in knowledge of mortgages and financing as myself that basically means that I took a lower interest rate but agreed that the rate could change after 7 years. So I wanted to redo the loan so I wouldn't be surprised by any shocking new interest rate next year.
In any event I found out that refinancing produced quite a few benefits for me and was probably worth doing at this point even if I hadn't felt the need to because of the balloon:
- It slightly lowered my monthly payment
- I get to skip a payment for the month of April
- It reduced the length of my remaining loan from 24 to 20 years
- I received an extra $1,500 or so back in the mail
Now in my case my banker said that part of the problem was that my taxes had been increased significantly, forcing the escrow to get a little messy, and that was costing me money. Additionally, I had others tell me it was because my "new loan" was for less money, but it was for the same amount of money that my old loan left off on, and I was paying a higher percentage amount on the principal for the old loan, so I'm still having a hard time swallowing that one.
Whatever the reasons, when you consider that the refinance charges were significant, it seems amazing to me that I could add to my debt but still come away in better shape.
The real shocker is that the interest went up, from 4.75% to over 5%, so the next time your shoping for loans and the focus has an over emphasis on the interest rate, be sure to check the monthly payment amount and the number of payments. Those are the numbers that hit your pocketbook in the end.
In any event I found out that refinancing produced quite a few benefits for me and was probably worth doing at this point even if I hadn't felt the need to because of the balloon:
- It slightly lowered my monthly payment
- I get to skip a payment for the month of April
- It reduced the length of my remaining loan from 24 to 20 years
- I received an extra $1,500 or so back in the mail
Now in my case my banker said that part of the problem was that my taxes had been increased significantly, forcing the escrow to get a little messy, and that was costing me money. Additionally, I had others tell me it was because my "new loan" was for less money, but it was for the same amount of money that my old loan left off on, and I was paying a higher percentage amount on the principal for the old loan, so I'm still having a hard time swallowing that one.
Whatever the reasons, when you consider that the refinance charges were significant, it seems amazing to me that I could add to my debt but still come away in better shape.
The real shocker is that the interest went up, from 4.75% to over 5%, so the next time your shoping for loans and the focus has an over emphasis on the interest rate, be sure to check the monthly payment amount and the number of payments. Those are the numbers that hit your pocketbook in the end.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Housing Now as cheap as Renting according to some numbers
I heard someone talking the other day about numbers he's been tracking for quite a while on the cost of owning a home versus the cost of renting. He said that for the first time his numbers were showing the cost of owning a house going down enough to be comparable to the cost of renting. So for those of you who've saved a nest egg and are looking to go from renting to buying, now might be a great time to do it. Sellers have started to acknowledge the drop in market values and listing prices have come down as a result.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Adding Craigslist RSS Feeds to your site can be a good promotion
I've been carrying Craigslist RSS feeds on a clients Real Estate website for quite a while, and after sticking with these somewhat secondary pages on the site, I have to say that the effort has born some fruit.
If your not familiar with RSS, its an XML based file format that a sending and receiving party to share data easily. It's tag based, like html, but the main intention of XML and RSS is to transfer the content, with less emphasis on how it should be displayed (there are techniques to specify preferred display now with XML, but we'll leave that for another day).
To display others RSS feeds on your website, you need:
- A dynamic website with some language that can be run on yor webserver. I use PHP.
- An XML parse module (or you could write your own from scratch but it's not necessary)
The way it works is that, when someone hits a page on my site that contains an RSS feed, my website server dynamically goes and hits the RSS feed address of the other site, such as Craigslist, pulls the data back realtime, and parses it for display in html on my page. Keep in mind though that what your retriveing is not html and not ready for immediate display. You have to read the records and output them in html, just as any other dynamic webpage works.
RSS is a boiled down XML specification, and typically includes a list of "News stories" or items. Each item consists of title, description, author, date, and a link to the full article on the originators site (Yes there's something in it for them too).
Here's some stats from my clients site to show you how including craigslist pages have helped with traffic:
Top Entry pages for February 2008(Webalizer)
1 2779 4.58% 1374 27.90% /
2 178 0.29% 127 2.58% /listings/314.html
3 138 0.23% 107 2.17% /craigslistannarbor.html
4 140 0.23% 99 2.01% /craigslistdetroit.html
5 256 0.42% 83 1.69% /listings/lakeproperties.html
6 175 0.29% 76 1.54% /adminsect/rsr-links.html
7 139 0.23% 75 1.52% /listings/311.html
8 165 0.27% 73 1.48% /listings/vacant.html
9 161 0.27% 62 1.26% /lakesomerset.html
10 68 0.11% 57 1.16% /listings/139.html
Top Search Queries(Google Webmaster Tools)
1 27% remerica 9
2 16% michigan real estate listings 8
3 7% craigslist ann arbor mi 8
4 4% craigs list ann arbor mi 3
5 4% vacant land for sale in michigan 9
6 3% somerset michigan 9
7 3% remerica real estate 8
8 3% craigslist ann arbor michigan 9
9 3% craigslist for ann arbor mi 5
10 2% somerset mi 9
11 2% craigslist ann arbor 46
Top Content last 30 days (Google Analytics)
1. / 745 433 00:01:28 38.16% 32.35% $0.29
2. /listings/lakeproperties.html 351 181 00:00:57 35.00% 17.38% $0.17
3. /listings/vacant.html 205 125 00:00:43 52.50% 31.71% $0.08
4. /listings/residential.html 202 118 00:00:53 39.47% 23.27% $0.08
5. /listings/314.html 199 171 00:01:14 77.37% 65.33% $0.00
6. /index.php?framecontent=mls-drilldown-menu.php&county=Hillsdale 184 46 00:00:20 0.00% 1.63% $0.11
7. /southern-michigan-mls-county-index.html 182 87 00:00:20 10.00% 4.95% $0.23
8. /listings/311.html 157 122 00:00:55 66.67% 40.76% $0.00
9. /lakesomerset.html 150 113 00:01:11 41.18% 38.00% $0.13
10. /craigslistannarbor.html 143 120 00:04:36 83.90% 81.82% $0.00
11. /listings/223.html 137 82 00:00:58 20.00% 10.95% $0.00
12. /listings/all.html 130 67 00:01:02 27.27% 16.92% $0.07
13. /listings/326.html 121 80 00:00:32 50.00% 23.97% $0.12
14. /listings/319.html 119 61 00:00:42 39.47% 26.05% $0.08
15. /craigslistdetroit.html 118 98 00:04:21 82.47% 78.81% $0.10
To find the Page Address of RSS Feed for the Craigslist page you's like to add to your site and select your region (I think craigslist makes you select a region first). For me, that takes me to http://jxn.craigslist.org/
Then I select "Real Estate for Sale", and click on the Orange RSS Icon at the bottom right of the screen, as shown.
Don't worry about the format of the resulting page that you get; it may look strange because its rss/xml, not html. The important thing now is to grab the address from your browser bar. That's the address that any software you set up will need to refer to to pull the feed.
So the Craigslist's page for Jackson Michigan Commercial Listings is:
http://jxn.craigslist.org/off/
(Don't confuse that with the RSS feed address. To get that you would need to go to that page, scroll to the bottom, and click on the orange RSS link icon, as previously discussed).
You can see the result of subscribing to the feed by going to my clients site at
http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/craigslistjackson.html
If your not familiar with RSS, its an XML based file format that a sending and receiving party to share data easily. It's tag based, like html, but the main intention of XML and RSS is to transfer the content, with less emphasis on how it should be displayed (there are techniques to specify preferred display now with XML, but we'll leave that for another day).
To display others RSS feeds on your website, you need:
- A dynamic website with some language that can be run on yor webserver. I use PHP.
- An XML parse module (or you could write your own from scratch but it's not necessary)
The way it works is that, when someone hits a page on my site that contains an RSS feed, my website server dynamically goes and hits the RSS feed address of the other site, such as Craigslist, pulls the data back realtime, and parses it for display in html on my page. Keep in mind though that what your retriveing is not html and not ready for immediate display. You have to read the records and output them in html, just as any other dynamic webpage works.
RSS is a boiled down XML specification, and typically includes a list of "News stories" or items. Each item consists of title, description, author, date, and a link to the full article on the originators site (Yes there's something in it for them too).
Here's some stats from my clients site to show you how including craigslist pages have helped with traffic:
Top Entry pages for February 2008(Webalizer)
1 2779 4.58% 1374 27.90% /
2 178 0.29% 127 2.58% /listings/314.html
3 138 0.23% 107 2.17% /craigslistannarbor.html
4 140 0.23% 99 2.01% /craigslistdetroit.html
5 256 0.42% 83 1.69% /listings/lakeproperties.html
6 175 0.29% 76 1.54% /adminsect/rsr-links.html
7 139 0.23% 75 1.52% /listings/311.html
8 165 0.27% 73 1.48% /listings/vacant.html
9 161 0.27% 62 1.26% /lakesomerset.html
10 68 0.11% 57 1.16% /listings/139.html
Top Search Queries(Google Webmaster Tools)
1 27% remerica 9
2 16% michigan real estate listings 8
3 7% craigslist ann arbor mi 8
4 4% craigs list ann arbor mi 3
5 4% vacant land for sale in michigan 9
6 3% somerset michigan 9
7 3% remerica real estate 8
8 3% craigslist ann arbor michigan 9
9 3% craigslist for ann arbor mi 5
10 2% somerset mi 9
11 2% craigslist ann arbor 46
Top Content last 30 days (Google Analytics)
1. / 745 433 00:01:28 38.16% 32.35% $0.29
2. /listings/lakeproperties.html 351 181 00:00:57 35.00% 17.38% $0.17
3. /listings/vacant.html 205 125 00:00:43 52.50% 31.71% $0.08
4. /listings/residential.html 202 118 00:00:53 39.47% 23.27% $0.08
5. /listings/314.html 199 171 00:01:14 77.37% 65.33% $0.00
6. /index.php?framecontent=mls-drilldown-menu.php&county=Hillsdale 184 46 00:00:20 0.00% 1.63% $0.11
7. /southern-michigan-mls-county-index.html 182 87 00:00:20 10.00% 4.95% $0.23
8. /listings/311.html 157 122 00:00:55 66.67% 40.76% $0.00
9. /lakesomerset.html 150 113 00:01:11 41.18% 38.00% $0.13
10. /craigslistannarbor.html 143 120 00:04:36 83.90% 81.82% $0.00
11. /listings/223.html 137 82 00:00:58 20.00% 10.95% $0.00
12. /listings/all.html 130 67 00:01:02 27.27% 16.92% $0.07
13. /listings/326.html 121 80 00:00:32 50.00% 23.97% $0.12
14. /listings/319.html 119 61 00:00:42 39.47% 26.05% $0.08
15. /craigslistdetroit.html 118 98 00:04:21 82.47% 78.81% $0.10
To find the Page Address of RSS Feed for the Craigslist page you's like to add to your site and select your region (I think craigslist makes you select a region first). For me, that takes me to http://jxn.craigslist.org/
Then I select "Real Estate for Sale", and click on the Orange RSS Icon at the bottom right of the screen, as shown.
Don't worry about the format of the resulting page that you get; it may look strange because its rss/xml, not html. The important thing now is to grab the address from your browser bar. That's the address that any software you set up will need to refer to to pull the feed.
So the Craigslist's page for Jackson Michigan Commercial Listings is:
http://jxn.craigslist.org/off/
(Don't confuse that with the RSS feed address. To get that you would need to go to that page, scroll to the bottom, and click on the orange RSS link icon, as previously discussed).
You can see the result of subscribing to the feed by going to my clients site at
http://www.remericasomersetrealty.com/craigslistjackson.html
