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We receive a lot of questions about Syndication (RSS feeds) so I thought I would take a moment to quickly explain what it is, how it works and why it's an excellent ways to market your properties online.

What is real estate listing syndication?

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS Syndication feeds are now widely used across the real estate industry to distribute property data. With an RSS feed you can automatically send frequently changing property information out to real estate listing search sites such as Trulia.com, Zillow.com, Google Base and many more.

Why is syndication important?

Exposure - It quickly gives your listing more exposure by placing the property information in multiple search sites.

Efficiency - It requires little to no effort. You only need to update your data in one place, then it's automatically updated in listing search sites via RSS Feed.

Note: Most feeds are updated daily so changes may not appear immediately on search sites.

How do I syndicate my listings?

There are a few ways to syndicate your listing data:

Broker website - many national brokerages offer syndication to agents.
Local MLS - many MLS services also offer syndication to their users.
Syndication Services - such as iPropertyWebsites.com.

What happens when listing search sites receive data from multiple sources?

With so many ways to syndicate your data it's inevitable that listing sites such as Zillow.com will receive multiple data feeds for your property. To ensure they use the most accurate information they have developed a trumping order in which feed priority is established.

Trumping Order/Rules (highest to lowest priority):

1. Manual Submission
2. Broker Feed
3. MLS Feed
4. Syndication Service (iPropertyWebsites.com)

For example, if Zillow.com received data for 555 Main St, Edmonds, WA from a broker feed AND from an iPropertyWebsites.com feed, it would automatically use the broker feed (disregarding the iPropertyWebsites.com feed) because the broker feed has the higher priority.

With that in mind, if/when you need to make a change to your feed it is very important that you update the appropriate feed source.

Here's a video that explains the Zillow Trumping Order in a little more detail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLgLVd9rQIg

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