After the fantastic response and great reviews we received from our previous announcement about the beta, we’re REALLY excited to announce today that our dsIDXpress WordPress IDX plugin is now available in nearly ALL of our dsSearchAgent coverage areas! Between the time when we made the announcement and today, we spent a great deal of time to ensure widespread MLS compliance, we added a number of new features, and we polished everything to a beautiful shine. With all of the functionality built into dsIDXpress, we’re absolutely confident that it will be The (with a capital T) go-to IDX solution for agents and brokers who want to embed the MLS data into their website and on their own domain name.
If you haven’t read our previous blog post on all the functionality contained in dsIDXpress, you may want to check it out right now. We now have our dsIDXpress “microsite” up and running as well. We have tons of details on the functionality on that site already, so rather than rehash all of that here, we encourage you to click through to the dsIDXpress site.
The reason we developed dsIDXpress was because we hear loud and clear how agents and brokers without tens-of-thousands of dollars to spend wanted to compete in search engines with the likes of Realtor.com, Redfin, Trulia, Homes.com, and other large brokerages. dsIDXpress provides all the tools and functionality to do just that at a tiny fraction of the cost. While we can’t guarantee — nor can anyone – that you’ll instantly rank #1 on Google for every address or MLS number in the MLS, dsIDXpress certainly gives you all the tools you need to do so. In fact, we already have seen a number of our trusted beta testers rank better than ALL of the aforementioned sites for given addresses in just the few short weeks they’ve been using dsIDXpress. Between our Live Listings(sm) shortcode functionality, our numerous widgets, and our listings and listing detail virtual pages, dsIDXpress will have you ranking well in search engines in no time at all.
I know that most of you have just been skimming this blog post up until this now with just one question in mind. “What’s the price?” you ask. Well, we’re happy to tell you that we’re offering limited time introductory pricing for this product at the ridiculously low price of just $29.95 per month per domain with NO CONTRACT! If you’re not already a proud owner of our dsSearchAgent Pro IDX solution, you’ll also need to pay a $99.95 setup fee. For those of you who already have dsSearchAgent Pro, or if you purchase dsSearchAgent Pro when you sign up, we’re not even going to charge a setup fee!
All that said, dsIDXpress is NOT meant to completely replace your IDX solution. On the one side, our new dsIDXpress product is meant to make it easy for you to add live MLS content to your blog as well as boost your long-tail search engine traffic. On the other side, our existing dsSearchAgent product is meant to be an interactive interface into your MLS’s data for your website visitors. dsIDXpress and dsSearchAgent are two different products for two different needs, but they’re certainly a great compliment to each other!
Again, we’re extremely excited to announce this product, and we can’t wait to see how our clients use it! You can read more about on the dsIDXpress site, you can request a free trial for your own blog, you can see it in the WordPress Plugin Directory, or you can simply contact our sales department to talk with someone about the product. Enjoy!
Congrats on the release – love the product from what I’ve seen so far on others’ blogs.
Still hoping for a typepad widget…. please please please. I don’t want to have to move platforms.
Gene – doesn’t TypePad have an export function? As WordPress gains more and more traction (it’s already the most popular blogging platform out there), I think you’re going to see more and more developers working exclusively on WordPress — leaving users of other platforms further and further behind.
Just my opinion…
To my amazement, I just called in and was shocked/amazed that you are not & will not be offering this service to our MLS (BAREIS — Bay Area Real Estate Information Services), which is the 2nd largest MLS in the SF Bay Area.
The reason I was given is that there hasn’t been a demand for it from our MLS. I said, “how could you gauge that given that this service was only launched a few days ago. He said they base that on the lack of interest for your regular IDX product from our MLS. To me that seems like more of a marketing lapse on your end than anything. For I have never rec’d anything promoting your service in our market area. In other words, if no one in our area knows about you, why would they ever demand it?
Our MLS has, I believe, over 7,000 members and covers almost half the counties in the Bay Area. Every other major IDX service offers their service to members of our MLS system. I can’t believe that a company as large as DIverse Solutions would turn its back on one of the major MLS systems not just in the Bay Area but in the entire state and U.S.
If what the person I spoke to said is correct and you truly have no interest in working with any of the 7,000+ agents in our MLS system, that seems like a very short-sighted way to run a business.
Hopefully the person I spoke to was off- base and you are actively looking to offer your service to those agents who want it.
If so, I am interested in your idxpress product and would like to talk more.
I just went into your regular IDX site and see that although our MLS (BAREIS — Bay Area Real Estate Information Services) is not listed. Curiously, though,I see a message on that page saying “Hmm…can’t find your MLS. Contact a member of our sales team and find out how to get it.”
It sounds like that’s just what I did…yet the answer wasn’t “here’s how,” but rather “we don’t plan to work with your MLS, case-closed.”
Please get back to me and “tell me it ain’t so”…for I’d like to talk to you about using your IDXPress product.
Hey Rod – The person you spoke to may not have known as we haven’t made an announcement in the office yet. We actually will be adding the MLS soon to our system for use with dsIDXpress and dsSearchAgent. BAREIS is one that we have been wanting for some time. Like you said they are a key MLS up in Northern California. We just got a few clients in the area so it should be available in the next 30 days or so.
Great news….and glad to hear that the person I spoke to at your office was off base (not to mention a bit arrogant and rude!). I’ll be keeping an eye out for it!
Thanks for the setting the record straight.
Interested in your services, but if you don’t support BAREIS, no reason to look into it further.
DS, I think this implementation is very well done. Couple of questions;
1. It would be nice to be able to use the DS List widget on a post.
2. I couldn’t figure out under OPTIONS on the DSIDxpress.com site, how to customize the top text of a listings summary page. Which field do I set, and where?
3. any thought or plans given to lead generation from a listing detail page, or a listings summary page? Having the ability to position at the top of the page, and the bottom of the page, a “Contact Me About This Listing” link, which could then lead to a DS form, and then lead to a DS pipeline, would be very beneficial.
thank you.
— Ed
Can I get this for the Maryland Washington DC area?
Do you know anyone that can help me with this?
turn key website using a wordpress base template ?
Please advice
Thanks,
@Shawn Dolan – received your voicemail. Thanks for the update, but it’s a shame your company doesn’t seem to have much interest in expanding to a big market like Cleveland, particularly with a WordPress-friendly company like mine. We could help you jump-start your product out this way. Unfortunately I probably won’t be able to wait around until you feel we’re worth focusing on. Just seems strange that you have people asking to use your product, but you pretty much chase them away.
@John – You are right it is a big market. We are definitely not ignoring it. We are just adding the areas that we are getting the most demand in first. The demand for your area is rising quickly and will most likely be one that we will be adding in the next month or two so keep checking back. If you can’t wait I understand.
OK. Thanks Justin!
Why are you using _ as seperators…Google has already stated they prefer ” – ” as seperators…?
Just curious
@Jim we actually utilize both hyphens “-” and underscores “_” in our URLs for various reasons
as for it’s viability in Google indexing, since ~2007 Google has treated hyphens and underscores equally. If you do a google search such as: http://www.google.com/search?q=google+underscore+hyphen you’ll see Matt Cutts say ~2005 to use hyphens, but then scores of blog posts relating to announcements in 2007, by Matt Cutts himself, and later stating that both separators are treated just the same.
So, conclusion: we use both, and happily, they are treated the same (ie. no penalization)
My site is being relaunched tonight with a brand new redesign that is going to put a lot of focus on this plugin. very excited about it as I will be able to display San Diego homes for sale from pretty much any neighborhood all throughout the site. It is also a great way to end blog posts with content that the search engines will love. Thanks for creating this.
Jon –
This is the video that I was talking about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k
As you can see it DOES make a difference now “-” are treated as seperators and _ are not
This was as off 2009 not 2007 – do you have anything recent that would suggest otherwise
@Jim: We don’t have an official Google doc to quote, but we do have direct evidence that Google actually looks at the letters between the _’s in the URL as words. Take a look at the #1 result for 800 Windrift Dr. You’ll see the matching parts of the address in the URL are bolded, indicating that Google is breaking them apart.
We would have used -‘s in the beginning anyway, but since some MLS #’s contain hyphens, it caused problems unless we used _’s for separating the address.
ok – that makes sense
I wish there were a work around to just use dashes all together and do away with the _
Thanks for the response
any plans on covering mls in Connecticut?
I’ll get our sales techs to contact you about this
Any plans to continue to expand to additional MLS markets? I have asked a couple of times along the way about MetroList (Denver, CO). We are closing in on a year, but unless I missed some news, no progess.
I would love to know if this is still something you are working on. My current site (built around Diverse Solutions) is becoming less and less relevant without some blog integration.
Thanks, Dan
@Dan
Metrolist CO is definitely in the works. Because it’s an MLS that tends to be extra picky with display rules, we admittedly were delaying expansion of dsIDXpress to their market for a while… but for the past few weeks we have been exchanging emails with their compliance department and should have dsIDXpress ready for Metrolist-CO members very shortly!
This plug-in sounds great. Will it work for any market? I am in Texas and would love to have a plug-in like this.
@Cindy what MLS are you a part of?