Yahoo Drops Mortgage Rates Into Search

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Yahoo Drops Mortgage Rates Into Search

By: David Utter
2006-08-29

The field of real estate has been attracting the attention of startups and major names alike on the Internet, with Yahoo embracing it from within its search engine results.

Yahoo! (YHOO) redesigned its Real Estate site to make better use of visits by people looking for home-related information. The lucrative housing market has been enjoying heavy demand, although the July figures for existing home sales fell after eleven straight quarters of gains.

Buyers who are still looking for a place to live have been increasingly turning to the Web for information. Yahoo's approach considers that people will visit a search engine to get ideas on where to go next for their house hunt.

On Yahoo's search results, a query for a city and mortgage rates, like Lexington KY mortgage rates, returns rates for the three most popular types of mortgages below Yahoo's sponsored results.

Ads for lenders and rate comparison sites also appear to the right of the search results, and two more sponsored ads are displayed at the bottom of the page. Yahoo displayed a total of twelve ads on this page, demonstrating there is plenty of advertising business for those queries.

Yahoo's updated Real Estate site provides a search feature for three million homes. Agent/MLS Listings show up in a default search, but with only three million homes currently available for queries, some markets will return listings from real estate classifieds instead.

Instead of the contextual ads that appear in search, Yahoo partners receive the premium ad placement on the Real Estate site. Experian's LowerMyBills.com, LendingTree, and Quicken Loans all show up as advertising partners.

Yahoo's popularity as an entertainment portal sometimes overshadows the more serious work it can accomplish with sites like Real Estate and News. The money available in the real estate market should encourage Yahoo to do something to increase awareness of what it can offer searchers for mortgage and home information.

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Tag: Yahoo

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