Realtor.com Populating Agent Profiles With Testimonials, Reviews From Third Parties

Many real estate agents may soon see bundles of testimonials, reviews and ratings popping up on their realtor.com agent profiles.

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That’s thanks to agreements recently signed by realtor.com operator Move with three survey services, RealSatisfied, Quality Service Certification and Testimonial Tree.

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All three firms will feed either testimonials or ratings and reviews to realtor.com agent profiles. The partnerships marks the latest step by realtor.com to beef up its agent directory, coming shortly after the listing portal incorporated agent transaction data and ratings and reviews into its agent profiles and agent search tool.

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Two of the partnerships seem likely to mostly have the effect of making some agents look more appealing. The content from Testimonial Tree and RealSatisfied will only appear in the “Recommendations” section of agent profiles, seeming to suggest that content from those sources will be, well, “recommendations.”

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Reviews from Quality Service Certification, on the other hand, will appear in the “Ratings and Reviews” section of agent profiles. Perhaps there’s more potential for those reviews to be critical. That would line up with Quality Service Certification’s tradition of publishing agent reviews on an all-or-nothing basis on RatedAgent.com.

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Realtor.com says that it requires all agent ratings and reviews to only come from consumers who have closed transactions with the agents they are reviewing, something that the listing portal claims isn’t the case with its competitors. The “Recommendations” that appear on realtor.com agent profiles can be written by anyone, such as a friend or colleague.

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The system also incorporates recommendations which can be provided by friends, family and colleagues.

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While agents can choose whether or not they want reviews to appear on their profiles, the decision is “all-in or all-out,” which will prevent agents from cherry-picking what reviews to show to consumers.

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Article by Teke Wiggin at Inman