Today Google UK has provided tenants with a new flat hunting service with Google Maps. The new property finder service, which goes live today, will allow home renters to search for properties by city or location and drill down by specifics such as price, type and numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms.
Google has signed up UK partners and has several hundreds of thousands of properties available for the launch today, the service is free to both tenants and landlords as Google will make money from running ads above and below search results.
If you want to use this new facility to find your flat got to Google Maps and search for the area that you want to find a home in.
Google Maps Search
Click on “Show search options” and then chose “Property” from the drop down menu
Google Maps Properties
Google Maps Properties 2
Now when you search you will have a window into which you can enter the sort of property that you are searching for – Rent or Buy, what price range, how many bedrooms ……… the search results will be shown on a map, with more information appearing when you hover your mouse over the location, and the listings for each side down the left hand side menu.
Google Maps Found
As with Property Portals in general the system operates by automatic feeds, which means that the small private Landlord is shut out unless they list their property with a Lettings Agent. There are 2 ways around this if you are a small Landord wishing to have your property listed. Pimlico Flats use an online Lettings Agent (Upad) who feed our listings everywhere (including Google Maps) for a fixed £59 fee. The other system is free although I haven’t tried it, but it should work in theory. Google Base is a Classifieds listing site, which feeds Google Maps. Google Base itself only accepts listings through a feed but you can place a free listing on the auction site eBid – and eBid feeds it’s listings onto Google Base. If anyone tries this I would appreciate it if you could let me know whether this works as a way of listing a property on Google Maps.
