Using IDX for listings instead of making a listing page yourself.

[rmalm]

For my personal website I use IDX to show my listings, it indexes the local MLS and shows changes in MLS almost immediately. Very useful.

My office's web master makes our listing pages manually and states if we change to using the IDX we will lose our page rank and our priority in search engines. She says that the dynamic IDX will hurt our search engine results. Should we continue to pay her to update our listings or should we switch to IDX?

Thanks

[RESteve]

Is your IDX framed? I think what your web master is saying has some truth in it - the unique content for your site will surely help with it being indexed and revisited by Google. I disagree, however, that by adding the static listing pages that it will automatically gain PR. In my experience, this is only if your mainpage has a PR value and you give it enough time to transpire to your subdirectory file structure, OR by that page getting linked from a site with a high PR.

[rmalm]

Sorry, I am a little slow.. Don't know if it is framed, don't think so... http://www.idxcentral.com/idxsearch.cfm?idxid=rmalm

So, do you think it could hurt PR, if we switched to IDx? That is, the pr of the index page?

[RESteve]

That's cool - they made the idx page look like yours. I'm assuming you don't own idxcentral.com, right?

It's not framed though - but a totally seperate site that looks JUST like yours. Your main page doesn't even have IDX on it - and technically speaking, your site doesn't have IDX at all. You link to a site that does, and that site happens to look just like yours, right?

So, if you did put an IDX on your site - I don't think it will hurt the PR of your main page at all. Personally, I host a framed IDX on my site, and have a separate area where I list my featured listings and they are static pages.

[rmalm]

Yeah, our local IDX just copies our code and makes the page look similar. Here is my offices listing page http://tahoeparkrealty.com/propertysales.htm (i know it needs a redesign), what do you think would happen if we deleted this used that local IDX?

[Morristown]

not a rip at all but I like the idx page a little better than your office listing page. Not much though, just a personal liking, don't think it would make much difference.

[rmalm]

I do as well. I am just wondering if it will hurt.

[Saodavi]

It's certainly easier to create and maintain that way. My IDX provider offers this as well. I would have used it if I hadn't already built my own page/engine.

If I had to do it again, I'd probably do it that way.

[unsakred]

I would host the idx yourself, so your website is getting the rankings instead of the idxcentral.

You could also create a backend for your listings, and seperate them from the heard so to speak, by changing color, placement etc.

[Morristown]

What do you mean host the IDX yourself? I am guessing that I will not be able to do that since I am getting my IDX from a 3rd party. Or am I wrong on that?

Jim