[RonnieG]

Actually, the more I look at it, and look at the various results from the Listings tab at REW . com, it looks a lot like listing aggregation / syndication from participating LEC site owners from their featured listings pages, and all contact is redirected to the LEC owner/broker via their lead management backend. Shades of P2A++.

The listings, as presented, are not IDX compliant, at least not in my market, so they would have to be entered by the REW site owner, who is presumably also the listing broker/agent. The list of cities for which listings are available is very small for our market, and seems to be automatically generated based on the listing inventory of the participating sites.

Interesting concept, if this is in fact the truth of the matter.

[Micheal Pannell Realtor]

The problem is, When you sign up for "This Test" the leads go right to this guys lead system. I am already getting emails from his new blogs

[RESteve]

Before we continue with the speculation, let's wait to hear back from the REW team. I understand everyone's concern with this.

I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation - let's just be patient.

[DallasFamilyHomes]

from participating LEC site owners from their featured listings pages

-
Well, the way I found it was one of my own brokerages listings. We allow those to be carried on all websites (which everyone should do IMHO), so I don't think it is limited to just what listings that person has, it's all of the mls for ntreis

Testing is what a dev server is for, no?

- Yes

Can you test something for search engine purposes if it's on a dev server?

- Not Really, but all of this can be easily turned off with a simple entry in their robots.txt file if they are done with their testing.

I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation - let's just be patient.

- agreed

[webmaster]

Hello everyone,

I am not officially back from Holidays yet, but I am back at home, so I figured I would address this before any more speculation happens.

So the question is - what is this? http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/...collin-county/

It's an iframeable IDX I have been testing out, nothing more.

Why is it here? Well as many folks know, REW basically own the "built in" or search engine friendly IDX market. That being said, our price point is far to high (starting at a minimum $2500 and you have to have a site through us) to allow us to compete with the MLS finders and diverse solutions of the world for a larger volume non built in solution.

So what you see is my first attempt at a new lower cost IDX product that will allow us to enter into the iframable IDX market at a lower price point.

Yes it is tied to a client and sends leads to him. Why? Because in order to do live beta testing of a product and be in compliance (which this product is and has been approved by NTRIES) it needs to be attached to a customer account in good standing with NTRIES.

Which leads to dealing with some of the speculation squashing: No we are not trying to become the next trulia, we are a website, marketing and IDX vendor (for Realtors specifically) and this is merely one product we are toying with at the given time. The plan is to offer it to "our customers" (If and when I decide to put it into production - if ever) - it would be just like our website products / IDX services you can purchase now - you would pay a setup fee and a monthly fee and could get access to the service - NOTHING changes about our model, we are acting as the IDX vendor here as we always have, we are just diversifying our product line.

Should our "customers" be nervous? Absolutely not - they should be excited, IF this thing comes out, it is yet another product that they can use in their internet marketing to increase their leads.

Is it supposed to be spidered? Yes, I am also doing some testing on some URL rewrites and sitemapping techniques. (Not because of your work order though Gregg, this is something I have had up for many months and it's not the same IDX as the one you have on your site, sorry. But it is the reason why I though I could get your hours down from the estimate you originally received, because I had already worked out quite a few of the bugs in the rewrites.

Will the "product" be hosted at REW? Yes, of coures. All products are currently hosted and will remain hosted at REW. Will we use the realestatewebmasters.com domain? If it makes sense (from a branding perspective) then yes. If I have 10,000 iframed IDX's out there, and agents like them and check the source to find out who provides it, I DO want them to see realestatewebmasters.com so that they can purchase as well.

Originally I had planned to do the iframed IDX's at www.rewidx.com (and I still might) - in fact I built one for MRIS that you can see at http://mris.rewidx.com/iframe/rew/morgan-carey/ quite some time before the one being discussed. I still haven't decided whether I want to brand www.rewidx.com separately (as the low cost and REW as the built in custom) or just have everything under the realestatewebmasters.com umbrella in fact I haven't even finished testing this one, so I don't even know if I will ever launch what you see currently - you guys probably miss hundreds of the developments that we do that we decide to scrap before they hit production, it just so happens that someone came across this one - it's not a conspiracy - it's just another day at REW.

So yes: (if it makes financial sense) REW will be entering our hat into the low cost IDX market (providing iframed IDX's or perhaps even spiderable IDX's for non REW websites) - but because I have not made any decisions, I simply can't tell you what the final product will look like, work like, how much it will cost etc - I quite simply am not that far along yet.

And NO: REW is not trying to move away from our core competency (providing killer sites, IDX's etc) and trying to become trulia. We do NOT want to be Trulia, trust me

Anyways everyone, I will be back to this thread, but I am still on holidays, so don't expect a fast turn around time on forum responses, it doesn't mean something shady is going on, it means that I am on vacation

[NY RE Broker]

See I knew there had to be a great explanation and here it is.

Thanks Morgan! Now get back to your final hours of vacation!

[jessiesc]

Enjoy your vacation and thanks for putting concerns to rest.

Personally, I think it's great idea as I could use this type of product on a few of my sites.

See you in a few weeks.

[Portland Real Estate]

Thanks for the update and clarification. I agree that offering a standardized low cost iFramed solution makes sense.

[Dave Kovaleski]

Hmm, spiderable, low cost IDX for non REW sites sounds sweet! (I added the low cost thingy lol, crossing fingers

[SEO Nick]

I think that's actually the idea