The aim of RealEstateVocies, an often neglected side-project of ours, is to help new real estate bloggers achieve a voice and get traffic to their blog.

In a corollary to that aim, today, we launched our very own Webring! You can join the RealestateVoices.com webring at http://www.realestatevoices.com/webring/ and drive additional readers to your blog and help your search engine ranking.

What is the RealestateVoices webring?

A webring is a collection of like-minded sites who agree to display a graphic on their site. When a user clicks on the graphic they are taken to another site belonging to the same webring.

We’ve taken the concept and added a few twists.

Firstly, you get what you give. You can’t join, put the badge on your site initially and then take it down straight away and hope to get other people to link to you. We count the impressions and clicks your graphic generates and then we link to your site on other members of the network accordingly. That is, if you generate lots of impressions and clicks, you’ll be shown and linked to more frequently in other areas of the network.

Secondly, most webrings do not give the sites benefit in search engines. If you follow the world of “search engine optimization” then you know that a large factor in how well you rank on Google is the number and quality of the sites that link to you. In a webring, the links coming to your site are run through something called a 302 redirect link. That basically means the links are worth nothing.

For the RealEstateVoices webring, all the links running through a 301 redirect, which Google treats the same as a static link. What all that means is that you will receive search engine benefit from the webring.

Join the Webring now at http://www.realestatevoices.com/webring/

Today, we at Homethinking are proud to announce the launch of neighborhoods.homethinking.com. Here’s the full press release. I’d also like to take a second and introduce myself. My name is Alex Mather and I am joining Niki Scevak and his Homethinking.com team as the new Product Manager.

What Makes it Different (and Useful)

While other sites give statistics on each neighborhood (Redfin, Trulia, and Zillow are great at this.) This data is useful (especially concerning schools and market trends), but from afar it’s still tough to really understand the neighborhood.

Imagine if we just designed a new fruit, we can spout out all of the data on it: 53% sour, 20% sweet, pH level of 2.2, citric acid levels, size in centimeters, it’s color, etc. You’d know a lot about the fruit but you wouldn’t know what it would taste like, would you? Now, imagine if we said our new fruit is like a lemon but bigger and sweeter, you’d know a lot more. Heck, your mouth might even water. (Example inspired by Made to Stick.)

Learning a new city by comparing its neighborhoods to the neighborhoods of a city you know well will allow you to get a feel for a new city quickly and easily.

How We Compared Neighborhoods

From our website:

Neighborhoods scores are initially calculated using demographic data from the US Census and other public sources. Wide numbers of demographic factors, such as age, marital status, whether the household has kids or not and the frequency of arts and culture activities, among other variables, were compared. The scores are then refined over time by reviews from people just like you.

Obviously, data only tells part of the story. We think of data as a starting point and that user reviews will eventually be the primary way we compare neighborhoods.

Calling All Agents!

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 38% of movers (over 16 million) moved to a different county including 19% that moved to another state!

Are you a real estate agent with an intimate knowledge of more than one city? This is your chance to show off your expertise – for free! Here are all of the ways you can get exposure:

1. Free exposure when you compare neighborhoods.
2. Top reviewers in each city get free exposure on city pages.
3. Premier exposure for all pages in a specific cities by paying to be featured for specific zip codes.

We all know the CAR statistic that 69% of people hire the first agent the communicate with. If you’re interested in being noticed by some of the 16 million people moving counties each year, this is your chance!

There’s More to Come

We’re just getting started in our efforts to make relocating easy so stay tuned for more features. We look forward to your feedback.