Local SEO for real estate agents: what changes

Two rules meet on the name field. Google permits an individual practitioner to hold a profile separate from the organisation, and where several practitioners work at one address that profile "should include only the name of the practitioner, and shouldn't include the name of the organization"; where a single public-facing professional works under a brand, the published format is "[brand/company]: [practitioner name]".¹ The professional code pulls the other way. Its advertising standard requires that all advertising disclose the firm name "in a reasonable and readily apparent manner either in the advertisement or in electronic advertising via a link to a display", and an individual member's site must display the firm name together with the states of licensure.² So the working answer is not one field but two: the profile name follows Google's practitioner format, and the firm name and licensure live in the description, the attributes and the linked site, where the code accepts a link to a display rather than the text itself. The code also forecloses several tactics the general advice treats as neutral. Members may not engage in deceptive framing of another party's content, manipulate listing content, misuse metatags, present others' content without attribution, or use misleading images.² A domain or URL must itself present truthful information, and only legitimate professional designations may be displayed, which rules out the abbreviation-stuffed profile name that reads as authority and is a breach.² One further clause has no general equivalent at all: a service may not be advertised as free or available at no cost where the member receives financial compensation from any source.²

The general answer covers what a management service does, what access to grant and what the red flags are. Two questions sit on top of it for an agent, and both come from the same place: the profile is professional advertising, and the professional is personally accountable for it. The first is accuracy as an obligation rather than as hygiene. The code requires that information published online be current, and that the member "promptly take corrective action" when content becomes inaccurate.² A vendor whose update cycle is monthly is therefore selling something the member cannot rely on: a sold listing, a changed licence status or a moved office is not a backlog item, and the person answering for the delay is the agent, not the vendor. The second is the name and the brokerage. Because the practitioner profile is named after the practitioner while the firm must still be disclosed, the arrangement has to survive the agent moving brokerage, which happens often, and which no general profile ever does. The question to a vendor is therefore not only who holds the ownership role but what happens to the profile, its reviews and its firm disclosure on the day the brokerage changes. An agent who cannot answer that has bought a listing that belongs to somebody else's business.