Sometimes things you create take on a life of their own whether you intended it or not.

Take our syndication graphic.

If there is one image that those in the Real Estate industry associate with Point2 Agent (besides our product’s logo of course) it is this  graphic.  Originally conceived as a one-time-use illustration in 2006 as a way to graphically represent the new (at the time) concept of syndication with only 8 partners, we had so much positive feedback that we continued using it in all of our marketing and updated it as we added partners – even though the constant maintenance is a full time job in and of itself, just ask our Art Director!

Today the syndication graphic stands at 37 active syndication partners, not to mention the hundreds of local re-syndication partners we currently offer – it is truly is a beautiful monster.

We are obviously very proud of our little graphic, but what I think what we are most proud of is its theft.

Let me explain.  Well, actually, I’ll let Google explain.

Check out these Google Image Search results for the phrase “listing syndication”, or if you are feeling adventurous you can perform the query yourself.

Look familiar?  While about half of the first page results are our venerable graphic, the rest are basically a motley assortment of rip-offs, remixes, and versions with a few “creative liberties” taken to them.  Here are a few of our favorites:

On closer inspection you can classify the imitations into two categories, those who merely replace the center piece with their own logo (pro-tip: you can tell it is a rip-off since only Point2 Agent lets you syndicate to Point2 Homes), and those which take the exact same concept but just change the center piece as well as the color of the arrows.

However we’re not mad about all this, in fact we are ecstatic.  Having our graphic ripped off  tells us three things:

1)  By remixing our intellectual property it shows that others hold it in high enough regard to actually warrant adapting it for their own use.  This makes all the work to maintain it and update worthwhile.

2)  By keeping the imitations close to the same concept it merely reinforces our original graphic and makes it more recognizable to our target audience & helps build our brand equity.  We like to think of it as free advertising.

3)  As continuation of #2, when people see the same concept over and over they learn to associate the whole concept of syndication with our illustration.  So when an Agent, Broker, or MLS/Association executive sees an imitation graphic the first thing they think of is Point2Agent.

So to all potential pirates out there, I only have one thing to say:  Help us out and steal our stuff!

In case you haven’t already heard, today Microsoft officially unveiled the newest iteration of it’s search engine, Bing, which aims to accomplish three things:

• Replace its often maligned Live Search

• Reposition it as a “decision engine” rather than a simple search appliance with an $80 million dollar cross-media marketing campaign.  As an aside, you can check out the first commercial for this campaign here, and no, contrary to my previously affectionate post, I don’t like this commercial one bit!

• As always, try to grab some market share from other search engines.

So how is it?

After spending a little time with it over the past couple of days, and*gasp*  setting it as my homepage instead of iGoogle, I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised.  It might not be the “Google-Killer” it was billed, but is a step in the right direction.   While I don’t think it will become my default search engine (I simply have too many services tied to Google in order to make that switch), I do think that it brings some great features to the user search experience.

The following is a rundown of some of these standout features, and how you can use them to get the most out of your queries, be it for real estate or otherwise.

Categorized & Related Searches

Whenever you complete a query, Bing will 1) provide you with a list of logical results categories for you to filter through in order to get access to the information you want quickly, and 2) display a list of the most common related search queries based on your original results.  For example, when I searched “Canada” the most common related searches were for the 411 service, an airline, and my bank!

Large Results Previews

This will likely be the fist thing you will notice when you first use Bing.  When you mouse over a search result you will notice a expandable box to the right of the result that when hovered over will give you a preview of the information on the page as well some of the prominent topics on the page.  This is a huge time saver, and will undoubtedly save users untold time and wasted clicks, in addition to being almost flawlessly implemented into the search experience.

Video Search & Previews

The prevalence of video on the web is growing at a fevered pace, so it makes sense that companies invest in new ways to search video instead of conventional text.  Bing ups the ante by offering a short description of the videos in results, referring sites, length of the video etc. But the best part is that you can preview video results with full audio with just a mouse-over – this will be a long way towards making sure you get the video you are looking for.

Smart Image Search

Image search is where almost everyone is going to agree that Microsoft has pulled off a coup against Google.  Besides the gorgeous snapshot presentation, the endless scroll results (no more clicking “next page”!), and the loads of filtering options in on the left panel,  Bing gives you the ability to show images similar to those displayed.  This is huge news for all those who spend way too long searching for the perfect image.

Bird’s Eye Maps

Don’t have Google Street View in your area yet? *cough* all of Canada *cough* Well then you are in for a treat.  Probably my favorite feature of Bing has to be the “Bird’s Eye” views built into the maps search which gives you a high-resolution satellite photography of most urban centers.

Now I know you are probably thinking, “so what? Google does this as well”, but the difference is that the Bird’s Eye imagery is taken on an angle rather than straight down – this means you can actually make out things like the signs on buildings, how tall a structure is,  and all manner of topographical features.  And to top it off, this imagery is taken from all angles, so you can rotate all around an area and get the Bird’s Eye view, rather than just a fixed angle.

In my opinion this is the perfect option in between conventional maps and Street View, and will be a valuable tool for real estate professionals since you can tag areas (like a properties) and send that link to prospects.  Hopefully this tech makes its way into marketplaces like Zillow and Trulia.

So there you have it.  What, in my opinion, are the most compelling features of Bing.

Do I think that these additions will change the tides in the search wars?  Probably not.  After all, Google has brand “ownership” on search and I don’t think they will be dethroned any time soon.  However I think Bing will gain market share at the expense of other brands in the market, such as Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask with this newest offering.

Also, if you would like to give Bing a shot, or just would like to see how its results stack up against Google’s make sure to check out the comparion search tool created by BlackDog.ie – all the search goodness, with none of the messy commitment!

If there is one SEO trick everyone and their dog seems to know, it is that inbound links from reputable sites generate authority, and supposedly lead to a higher Google page rank over time; which of course will lead to more traffic/prospects/$$$/yada yada yada.

While this is all fine and dandy, the proliferation of social media tools on websites which allow for user participation (oh like this blog perhaps) has led to a nasty little bit of a gaming when it comes to inbound linking – what I like to call “comment duping”.

What is this nasty affliction you may ask?  Simply put, this is when a comment is left with the sole intention of leaving a link back to their own site or blog, but is thinly veiled so as not to be confused with your typical spam comments.

How exactly does it differ from conventions comment spam?  Well besides not being about suspicious pharmaceuticals, ways to increase your virility, or poker, these comments will at least attempt to half-heatedly acknowledge the post on which they are commenting before moving into the shameless self-promotion phase.  Here are a couple examples from a post I recently read on the Canadian housing market: “Good post!  Check out my Top Ten List of Crazy Cats ” or “Canada is in a recession.  Visit my blog for more details!”

A prime example of real-life useless information.

Ouch.  I don’t know about you, but if I was the administrator of a blog that had these comments show up I would be hammering on the “delete” button faster then you can say “captcha”.  It is not even the fact that you are trying to game Google that really annoys me, but that people don’t realize that if you craft a genuine or well-thought-out comment people are going to naturally want to check out your site!  It just needs a little more effort then simply inserting a URL.

In an effort to help administrators pick out comment duping, as well to help others make sure their comments are genuine & not misconstrued as dupes, I threw together a few commenting do’s and don’ts into a handy little chart.  Feel free to use it, pass it around – heck, even sew it onto a pillow if you want – as long it helps one person create better comments, or helps one blog administrator from going nuts I am happy.

Click on image for the full-sized version!

Have any other commenting pro-tips for the masses you would like to share?  Leave a comment on this very post and let everyone know!  That is if I haven’t already completely scared you off commenting for the next while…

So how do you find these things out? Well, if you are like most people, you use Google – but they merely act as the gateway to the information you seek.  You still have to comb search results and go to 3rd party websites to find the answers you seek.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Google could give you the answer right away without having to click through to a different site?

Well, luckily for us, Google has a few under publicized tricks that will do just that when it comes to searching for certain information.  Here are five of the neatest ones available:

As cool as these tricks are, keep in mind they are merely the tip of the iceberg.  Google has a whole section dedicated to helping you improve your search experience, which you can check out here.  And, if you happen to know another any other great tricks be sure to leave a comment so everyone can benefit from them.

This saying, roughly translated from ad-speak, states that unless the message/product/service you are trying to promote is everywhere possible no one will pay attention to it since consumers are bombarded with too many ads daily, and generally don’t have the time or attention to process them effectively.

Besides making me despair for the sad state of our society when you consider the amount of advertising and brand exposure each of us faces every day (3000 messages per day according to the UCS), it really made me stop and think for a moment – is this saying even valid anymore?

Unable to decide for myself, I floated the question to my Twitter network and was surprisingly inundated with replies from people on both sides of the debate.  After a while the consensus seemed to be that while it may be practical to blanket the globe with advertising if you are a well-endowed company like Coca Cola (or now that I think about it, a spammer) this will never make economic sense for 99.9% of companies out there.

In order to be competitive, it makes sense to only advertise in the same “environment” as your target market since they will be much more receptive to your message then the general public, and in turn give you “more bang for your buck” so to speak.

If you look at the big picture, internet advertising magnifies the concept of target marketing ten fold since consumers are going to visit only the websites that are of interest to them, and therefore are afforded the luxury of bypassing ads they do not want to see – unlike, for example, walking down the street – you can’t block out ads in the real world (well you can if you close your eyes, but then you run the obvious risks).

But as you, me, and any other internet users already know, to advertisers this concept is old hat.

It may have been a shock the first time you logged into your Gmail account and saw contextual ads served up that were similar to the subject matter of your email (sometimes with hilariously unintended consequences), or the first time you saw Amazon recommend you a novel based on your prior purchase history.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as advertisers look for increasing clever ways to target and segment us consumers in order to get their message out there.  For instance, in early 2009 Google will be launching targeted TV advertisements in conjunction with satellite provider Echostar, in a bid to get ads in front of your eyeballs that you may actually respond to, rather then TiVo past.

And it’s not just these industry titans getting into the act either.  Last week I responded to two separate messages on twitter regarding wine and jazz, and within minutes I was followed by Popptags (a creator of wine tags) and JazzCrowd (a FaceBook group for jazz lovers) – a process becoming (un)affectionately known as “Twittertising”.

How did they accomplish that?  It was probably as simple as using the Twitter Search functionality to find all the tweets including a certain keyword, or using a keyword tracking service like Tweetbeep.

Creeped out yet?  I know I am getting there.

All of a sudden that scene from the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruise goes to The Gap only to verbally accosted by the sales hologram asking about his previous purchases sounds fairly plausible.

Ok, NOW I am sufficiently creeped out – any future that is influenced by Tom Cruise can’t be good for anyone.

I’m having a bit of a love-in with Google Chrome right now.

Of course, I’m coming at it from two different perspectives.

1.  I’m enjoying Chrome as a run-of-the-mill web surfer, checking scores (winning), checking account balances (losing) and checking in with friends on Facebook (holding).

2.  But from the other side . . . as someone who works in tech and designs for the web, I can’t help but wonder how many web developers are going to be putting in 90 hour weeks in September to ensure full Chrome compatability.

(probably not a bad idea.)