Words you typed into search engine when buying / selling home?

[miner2049er]

As I am adding to my knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO), in particular with regards to real estate, I'm curious to know what some of the popular keyword phrases are. If you bought or sold a previous home using the internet, what words did you type into Google (or other search engine) before you bought or sold that home?

Below I'm using made-up place names, which would be substituted by real place names like Santa Monica, Long Beach, Culver City etc.

So if looking to buy a home, did you type in something like:

green river homes
houses for sale in biddleton
edgebury real estate
san pacino valley single family homes

etc. And if selling a home, things like:

anytown realty
mountain village realtor
selling home in Desert City
where to sell home in Aston Park

I'm looking in particular for the real estate words you surrounded the place names with. It might answer questions like is "homes" more preferred than "real estate."

If you can remember the *exact words* that ultimately led you to finding who to sell/buy your property, that would be very useful to myself, and many others who are going to read this thread in the future.

I'm sure there are online tools that might be able to assist here (can anybody suggest any?) but this is just a rough poll of people who have used search engines to buy and sell homes.

Thanks!

[ralph.m]

There are services on the web (used to be free, but no longer, AFAIK) that show you how many times particular words and phrases were searched for over a certain period on Google. That will most likely give you a better sense of what search terms people are using that you'll get from members posting here. I'd be interested to know what tools people use for this, as I've gotten out of touch since the free ones disappeared. (I tried a paid one for a month some years ago, but stopped needing that anyway.)

[Stevie D]

To be honest, I didn't touch Google when I was buying my house. I went into physical offices in the town, and I went to the websites of specific agencies that I knew of and trusted. There are some things where I trust the democracy of the internet, but not when I'm spending that much money!

[ralph.m]

It's pretty common where I live to visit the websites of real estate agents to find out what's for sale. That's what I do (and I am looking). But I just Google "real estate agents [my city]".

[miner2049er]

Thanks to all for the replies so far. I was once far more used to hearing the phrase "real estate agents" though as many will know, in the USA, the term "realtor" is more commonly used. Not sure about other countries around the world where English is spoken, such as Canada.

So using (without quotes), "cityname realtor" or "realtor cityname" would be the way people search. The order of words does affect search results, as I recently found out in searches for "cityname pizza" and then "pizza cityname". Google does not return the same results for the two queries, although very similar.

[Stevie D]

Thanks to all for the replies so far. I was once far more used to hearing the phrase "real estate agents" though as many will know, in the USA, the term "realtor" is more commonly used. Not sure about other countries around the world where English is spoken, such as Canada.

In the UK, the normal term is just "estate agent" ... we know there's nothing real about them