Curious Use of “MLS” in Meta Tags at Realtor.com

The Realtor Code of Ethics Standard of Practice 12-10 states:

REALTORS®’ obligation to present a true picture in their advertising and representations to the public includes the URLs and domain names they use, and prohibits REALTORS® from:
1) engaging in deceptive or unauthorized framing of real estate brokerage websites;
2) manipulating (e.g., presenting content developed by others) listing content in any way that produces a deceptive or misleading result; or
3) deceptively using metatags, keywords or other devices/ methods to direct, drive, or divert Internet traffic, or to otherwise mislead consumers. (Adopted 1/07)

(Bold is my emphasis.)

At the NAR Board of Directors meeting at the 2007 NAR Realtors Conference & Expo, they:

Added optional MLS provision allowing prohibition of MLS participants, subscribers, licensees from claiming to be or suggesting that they are an MLS, including in domain name and email address;

There are associations out there forbidding their members from using terms including “MLS” on their web sites.

Why then does Realtor.com, the “Official Site of the NAR”, have “MLS” in their meta keywords?

Just….seems…..wrong….


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NAR CEO Dale Stinton Stops By NARWisdom.com

The CEO of the National Association of Realtors, Dale Stinton, dropped by our little corner of the blogiverse and left a lovely comment on the “Why the NAR Needs a Social Media Director” post.

No job offer yet ;)

But hey, at least I still have a NAR membership card! (Hopefully they aren’t in the process of exiling me…)

I’d like to personally thank Mr. Stinton for coming over and putting his thoughts to “print”. Took some guts, and in my opinion was a big step forward for the NAR leadership team.

Here is what he had to say:

I have been reading a lot of blogger comments about social media lately that suggest NAR is late to the blogosphere party. I guess the way I see it, we’ve actually been going to a lot of consumer and communication parties lately – but the bottom line is: most of these folks’ observations about our participation in blogs (no matter how kind or unflattering) are right!

We need to engage in the real estate conversation everywhere, not so much to convince, but to show we give a hoot. While blogging as a genre is hardly mainstream yet, especially to us more traditional communicators, we need to encourage and participate in all media. The old axiom - “the medium is the message” couldn’t be more apropos.

The advantage to us is we probably have more information on almost any aspect of the real estate business or marketplace than any other single entity – it seems pretty darn short-sided not to be making it available to those that care enough to enter the blogging fray. The worst possible reason not to actively participate is that we might get our feelings hurt. I’ll gladly take that chance if we learn something from it.

So this is an early valentine to all of those out there who ‘lead by blogging’ – congrats to you for your passion - whether there’s one or one hundred or one thousand other voices out there in the wilderness, at least you are engaged. My pledge to you is simply that we will do better, make more of an effort to be good ‘blogging’ citizens, and engage our members and the consuming public we so zealously claim to serve, in a more hearty debate and sharing of ideas.

My apologies if my grammar may not be the best, but I own it – in the words of the immortal Dr. Frasier Crane - I’m listening!

My emphasis in bold. In my comment reply, I said we’d hold him to that…

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