Google's Portal Gambit

Source: Mike DelPrete

The next battleground for traditional, paid-for portals has just been exposed – and it’s one of their oldest ‘frenemies’: Google.

Those with long memories might recall Google clambering into the property aggregation game in 2009. Drawing the data from their knowledge of agent listings made available through Search, they populated Google Maps with red dots that would open up and show details of properties available for sale or to let. The idea was that they would charge agents in due course for prominence, as they do right now, if you want to have an enhanced company listing for people driving round your area.

Now, welcome back to the future.

Source: Mike DelPrete

US property commentator, Mike DelPrete’s latest article showcases that in some areas of the US – only on mobile for now - listings are popping up in Google Search. They have links to full property details pages – still within Google – and ways to contact an agent broker directly. Now, this is the States so there are some significant differences; the agent is ‘a top-rated agent near you’, not the agent that’s instructed on the property. Over there, you have a buying agent to act on your behalf, so this is a legit way of approaching the seller’s agent to book a viewing.

All of the listings likely come from the Multi-Listing Service (MLS) where most – but not all – listings are held. (Over there, the same property stock via MLS is available on +all+ the portals – imagine!). In this case, a company called ComeHome are aggregating the listings “in partnership” with Google. They seem to be a new portal – the market leader, Zillow, and competitors Homes.com (owned by OnTheMarket’s acquirer CoStar), Realtor.com and others are nowhere to be seen.

The driver in 2025 for Google is pretty much the same as it was in 2009 – give agents a need to pay for their businesses to be listed with Google. Use Google Reviews. Upload more data, every day. Because if you don’t your competitors will.

I’d gently suggest that this is going to add to next year’s pressure on paid-for portals. When you’re an agent spending money on pay-per-click with Google, your focus is then going to be drawn to how much you’re paying-per-lead on other marketing channels. When it comes to Rightmove specifically, credible, alternative ways to list properties (such as Google) will add to a slow fragmentation of its dominance – particularly, as here, when the results are ‘sponsored’ and therefore might be chosen to win a particular listing that then doesn’t make it onto that portal.

Will this drive OnTheMarket or Zoopla to try and buy-up all of these slots? I recall them both using Facebook Marketplace in earnest a few years back when that momentarily became the ‘meta-portal’ of choice. There are strong echoes of that initiative, as well as 2009 Google Maps, here; surface-level visibility without depth of experience. We know people love looking for homes, have FOMO if they think they can’t see everything and want to be able to do more than just filter for bedrooms, location and price.

Ultimately, Google shut down its Maps property feature after two years of trying to make it work. In the end, consumers made it clear that they preferred the “friendly layer” – something familiar, with results they could trust, quickly uploaded and complete. They’ll be focused on not making the same mistakes this time but it’s still hard to see how they carve out paid-for value when the experience is so clearly a ‘pay-to-win’ listing rather than anything that I might really, really want.

In 2026 we’re all going to get a lot more used to ‘hyper-personal’; responses that match what we want and give us them in the format that we most respond to. Google’s testing of this feature in the States will be fascinating to watch – if they roll it out in full, Rightmove’s shares are likely to plummet even further.

It’s the traditional, paid-for portals that stand to lose a lot of agent revenue if Google convinces the latter to spend on these sponsored ads. Or maybe, as in the States, an ambitious young portal might want to use this feature to challenge the more established players.

Popcorn out – it’s going to be a pivotal year in portals, without a doubt.