Google has recently announced that it has expanded its real estate listings on Google Maps. Andrew Foster, who is one of the product managers of Google Maps, explained that Google was rededicating itself to this market because their in-house research showed that a large portion of the population are using the Internet to search for a new home. Currently, according to statistics from Hitwise, Google Maps is only a very small player in the online real estate market and it only sends about 2% of its traffic to various real estate web sites. The current market leaders for Real Estate search are Realtor.com, Zillow.com, and Yahoo Real Estate.

When a buyer is looking for a house, location plays a very essential role, and just like Zillow, Google Maps also puts a house’s location at the front and center of its presentation. Looking at houses on Google Maps, however, makes one thing very clear and that is Google is only aggregating data from listing web sites and getting its data from brokers who update their listing on Google Base. This means that listings on Google Maps are not necessarily as up to date or as comprehensive as those you could find on similar services.
It is also quite obvious that real estate listings aren’t the center concern of Google Maps. Google’s competition usually offers far more options when searching for a house (e.g. type of house, lot size, the year when it was built, etc.), and does a better job at displaying other important information about a house and the neighborhood. It can tell you for instance, the quality of local schools, restaurants, shopping malls and so on.

While it is good to see that Google is re-structuring itself to the real estate market, this is hopefully only the beginning of the company’s efforts, because in its current state, these nifty listings on Google Maps are a nice addition to a great product, but don’t hold up as a real estate offering in its own right.