Written By: Matthew Ferrara

Google could afford to keep mapping real estate for decades but stopped it when consumers didn’t use it. Meanwhile, REALTORS continue to waste scarce marketing dollars on newspapers and postcards.

By now you’ve heard that Google will pull real estate ads from its mapping tools. When it added the search feature in 2009, Google considered it an experiment, so they carefully monitored how people used it. Two years later, the data led them to discontinue real estate mapping, “in part due to low usage” and in other part due to “the proliferation of excellent property-search tools on real estate websites.”

In other words, Google saw that a) consumers didn’t search for real estate on maps and b) consumers did use other ways to find real estate online.

This is how modern businesses should operate. Experiment, measure and learn from the results. Use data to innovate. And, in some cases, to pull ineffective products from the shelf (even digital ones). Google’s blog noted, “…that there might be better, more effective ways to help people find local real estate information than the current feature makes possible.”

REALTORS must learn this lesson.

Some brokers have seen the light. They have concluded that years of research from the National Association of REALTORS, plus their own experiences with newspaper “search” advertising, proves that consumers have always had “better, more effective ways” to buy or sell a home. Even before the internet. A study of 50,000 REALTORS by Baylor University noted negative returns on newspaper advertising while more effective ways (like low-cost referrals) created plenty of business.

Still, thousands of classified ads appear weekly in the un-bought and un-read pages of wind-tossed newspapers stacks across America. Some are even scanned and posted online. Still, no consumers use them. Still, no leads come from them.

Can we learn from our mistakes?

Some pundits are wondering “why” Google would stop mapping real estate ads. They imagine Google has some secret plan or new application on the horizon. Actually, I’d say Google’s reason is plain and simple: They didn’t become one of most productive companies in history by perpetuating mistakes or ignoring facts. Real estate ads will disappear from maps because customers simply didn’t search for them. They didn’t work.

Why fund something that consumers neither want nor need?

Now, take it a step further: Recent research indicates that less than half of buyers felt mapping – the simple kind – was a “most valuable” feature on real estate web sites. Instead, they considered multiple photos, better descriptions and videos significantly more important. What are the chances real estate portals will “go Google” with this consumer data, remove maps from their websites, and double-down on better descriptions and real videos?

The answer, of course, is on page D3 of your local newspaper.