04-17-2006, 10:08 AM
Quote:Google is certainly not the first company to venture into the free online classifieds business. However, the fact that the Google brand is so well known and synonymous with finding anything online positions Google Base as a strong contender in the local search and classifieds business.
"Now I believe more of the smaller [real estate] firms and even the agents are going to quickly become aware of Google Base," predicted Peter Conti, VP at local advertising research firm Borrell Associates Inc.
But some question whether Google has mastered the subtleties of the classified search space, which is very different from the more generalized search in which the company specializes. For one thing, information in real estate, job and merchandise listings can go stale rapidly. "Vertical search is date stamped...it's not a persistent Web page," ...
full article: http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3598386