Google and Zillow announce the acquisition at the Realtors Conference and Expo in Las Vegas (NAR).

This video is from the Business Technology & Information Systems Forum: Are You Ready For The Future?

The speakers in the video are Richard Barton (Zillow), Saul Klein (Internet Crusade), Justin McCarthy (Google), Greg Swann (BloodHoundRealty) and Joel Burslem (Inman News).

Google and Zillow discuss how they plan to eliminate the MLS system.

Special thanks for Faith Sedlin from Oodle.com and Dan Daugherty from RentMarketer for helping me brainstorm some over-the-top ideas for this video!

I thought it might be nice to make a video for the folks that couldn’t attend the NARPM Annual Conference and Trade Show this year.

NARPM pulled off a pretty good show.

Featured in the video:

• Lisa Ray from RentMarketer.com
• Matt Teichmann from MyNewPlace.com
• Darryl Wilks from RentalHunt.com
• Andrea Reichard from Rent2BuyAmerica.com
• Scot Cowger from Domin-8
• Tereasa Guitierrez from FARPM

I got to meet a ton other nice folks that I did not get on camera such as:

• Marc Cunningham from Grace Property Management (YAGL)
• John Helm from MyNewPlace.com (had breakfast with him on Friday)
• Peter Meer from Meer and Company (he will be coming on my podcast show)
• Faith Sedlin from Oodle (she really knows her stuff)
• Michael Mino from Property Boss
• Mike Anderson from HomeRentals.net (sorry I missed his party that went to 2am)
• All the guys over at RentalHomesPlus
• Steve Huey and Kevin from Rentals.com (Sorry I didn’t make it to your party, I ran out of time. Thanks for stopping by my booth and saying hi.)
• Karen and Luke at ApartmentSearch.com
• The MoveFrog guys
• Sylvia Hill from NARPM (finally got to meet you, thanks for stopping by my booth)
• Steve Wood from Epic River
• Michael Quinn from BlueTux (Sorry I forgot your partner’s name)
• and many others (sorry if your name is not here)

As my regular readers know, I do like to poke fun at my competition. My main competitor, Rentals.com, has purchased links in the past, so what better way to highlight this than with a video where RentVine.com is the Mac guy and Rentals.com is the PC guy in an Apple commercial.

Since I only work on my site part time and I am much smaller than Primedia (company that owns Rentals.com), I can not afford to buy links to keep up with them. I also can’t afford to spend expensive SEO consulting fees, and I brew my own marketing efforts.

In terms of the paid links debate, I have to stand by Google on this issue. I am persuaded by Matt Cutts who over and over has talked about leveling the playing field for the small guy like me who can’t afford to purchase links.

I think purchasing links can produce some really bad content. Reading through 200 words of a pay per post about rentals.com recently was really hard because you could just hear the author saying, “Oh, only 40 more words to go to get my $11 bucks, what kind of fluff can I say about them now?” I even wrote the author and he agreed with me.

I know paid links will not go away, but I like the fact that Google is looking out for the small guy and will help my efforts in competing with big sites.

I think your view point can be affected by where you sit. For instance:

• if you are an SEO and have clients, buying links can be a quick way to get your client ranked and make you look good. [SEO’s are pro paid links]
• if you work for a large company that has a large advertising budget, buying links is easy thing to do [Pro paid links]
• if you are a small mom and pop site buying links to keep up with large companies is too expensive [against paid links].

(Special thanks to my friend Dave Besnette for the voice of the PC guy.)

Video of Paid Links session at SES San Jose 2007 with:
Danny Sullivan - SearchEngineLand
Matt Cutts - Google
Greg Boser - WebGuerrilla
Dave Naylor - DaveN
Aaron Wall - SEO Book
Rand Fishkin - SEOMoz

This was a super secret session that bloggers aren’t allowed to blog about, but I managed to video it! Check it out before it gets DMCA’d.

[Warning: the dork factor of this video is extremely high.]

Interested in seeing another video on paid links I did recently?