Yesterday, Google announced that it will expand the property listings on Google Maps. In an interview with The Age, Andrew Foster, a product manager at Google, said that Google will re-focus its efforts in this market because it has noticed an increasing number of people using the Internet to find new homes. According to data from Hitwise, Google Maps currently only plays a very small role in the online real estate market, as it directs only 2% of its own traffic to real estate sites. The current leaders in the real estate market are Realtor.com, Zillow, and Yahoo Real Estate.
It is worth noting that Google has offered this feature on Google Maps for quite some time, but it still hasn't managed to significantly cut into the traffic of Realtor.com or Zillow. Therefore, we'll have to wait and see whether Google will use some marketing strategies to promote this improved service, or if it will continue to remain relatively unnoticed.