These days IDX plug and play tools are everywhere. The vast majority of real estate websites I come across utilize framed IDX solutions. Sure, they are easy and cheap to install on a site and often times they offer more than just listings data. Some have begun to integrate neighborhood information as a new reason to buy their service. Some offer backend transaction management systems and entire website platforms to go along with their IDX services. Others have fancy map searches or other bells and whistles. All of this may sound great and surely seems like a great deal, especially for a low cost. That is until you understand what you are giving up by thinking inside the box.

A framed solution is viewed by Google and other major search engines as a blank box. Because of this, every plug and play tool is viewed in the same way. There are some issues with this. Real estate in the modern world relies on driving traffic to your website. What's more is keeping the users engaged with your site once there. If getting users to your website is the most important metric, than boosting your SEO is the best way to ensure your site will rank higher on major search engines. Unfortunately, since framed solutions are viewed as blank boxes by major search engines, they offer you no SEO benefit at all. Therefore, you might as well not have a plug and play on your website at all because users will not find your website's content while searching for it.

So think outside the box!

Some large companies have built their own custom Listings Search platforms. However, this typically requires a massive amount of effort, time, and resources. Think about it.