Major Site Update - June 08

As you may have noticed there have been some major changes in our directory format, site guidelines, submission policies and terms of service. We felt that these changes were necessary to affirm and re-establish the integrity of our site, our listings and our value to the online community of real estate related webmasters.

We have worked very hard to do the same through the years in modifying our format and offerings so that our listings were readily apparent to visitors looking for a regional representation of related services and search engine spiders. As the technology has changed along with indexing and Page Rank® distribution we have attempted to, and in most cases did, stay ahead of the curve.

Our listing pages remained in the main index long after most similar directories had gone totally supplemental or had been banned altogether. We have always sought to maintain a high standard for inclusion and a high level of appropriate, quality references to insure that we could keep moving forward with confidence.

Well, about a month ago... all of our internal pages lost their Page Rank®. This was a clear signal to us that major changes were required so we did what we felt was necessary to re-gain Google's confidence and filed a reconsideration request.

Our fear was primarily that they thought we were, in effect, in the business of selling links because we offered presell pages and sponsored listings. We also offered a reciprocal listing option whereby the review fee would be waived for qualifying related sties that linked back to our directory. All of the sponsored/reciprocated listings were reviewed before being accepted, as well as, the sites that had hosted content pages and it was clear in the submission process that the fee was for the review and not for inclusion. Where I think that we really dropped the ball was offering a refund for sites that were not accepted, which leads to the logical conclusion that the fee was for the listing and not the review. The presell pages and reciprocated considerations were just bad ideas and we have to take responsibility for that.

We had also, early on in our history, traded listings to a few quality related sites for their links back to our other related sites. We don't know if this was an issue but decided that we would clean things up once and for all. The following changes have been instituted for the betterment of our site, our listings and our community:

1. We have moved all listing pages one level from home and redirected all of the supporting pages to the appropriate main level pages.
2. We have removed all states/regions that did not have unique listings on them. Those states/regions will be reinstated if/when the demand requires.
3. We have removed all the "presell pages" or "hosted content" pages.
4. We have removed any third party listing arrangements and contacted the site owners asking them to remove our link.
5. We no longer support "sponsored listings". All listings are now located one click from home and subject to an annual review fee.
6. The "site life" listing option has been removed. In order to maintain the integrity of our listings we feel that all sites must be reviewed at least annually.
7. The reciprocal listing option has been removed.
8. We've ramped up the submission guidelines and quality guidelines and will be reviewing all listings to ensure that they comply with the new standards.
9. We've added a "flag site" icon next to all of the listings so that visitors may alert editors as to sites which may not comply with our guidelines or terms of service.
10. We've edited, and will continue to edit, any spammy anchor text.
11. All U.S. listings will be required to enter a primary city of service in addition to the state.
12. All international listings will be required to enter a country and all Canadian listings will be required to enter a province.

We're confident that most will agree that these changes were prudent, appropriate and should guarantee that our real estate directory will remain a trusted resource for years to come. We will be adding more features to our directory listings, directories list and services for our visitors so please check back frequently.

If you have questions about your listing, would like an expedited review, or to be contacted with further site updates please contact us. Be sure to select the "my listing" or "site updates" topic and include your url in the body of your message if appropriate. We are grateful to all of our supporters through the years and expect to provide the level of quality and service that you have become accustomed to.