Oodle Classifieds Serve Up Local Market Data
Online classified-ad aggregator Oodle today announces the debut of the Oodle Index, a comprehensive real-time, locally-based price gauge for many of the products it offers for sale.
At launch, the Oodle Index will list price ranges for cars, real estate and rental apartments contained in the company’s index of more than 20 million listings from 75,000 sources and covering the major metro areas and suburbs around the country.
“We see a lot of data flowing through our system, and thought it would be useful to use that data to compile pricing guides for consumers,” said Oodle CEO and founder Craig Donato. This data isn’t based on samples but on a comprehensive view of the entire market. It can be highly localized on a metro or even a neighborhood level. And it will be timely, with daily updates.”
“The Oodle Index will give users an accurate snapshot of what’s happening in their local market,” he said. “That’s especially important in classifieds, where pricing in a lot of the categories can be very inefficient.”
The Oodle Index data is displayed inside an interactive tool at the top of the results page for an Oodle search. For example, a Chicago-area search for a 2002 Honda Accord with 40,000 to 50,000 miles on the odometer produces a bar chart with six bars, showing the number of cars available with those specs for six price ranges from $12,000 through $17,000. Mousing over each bar shows how many Hondas at that price are available now and how many have come through Oodle listings in the last six months. Clicking on the bar will bring up the actual listings for Honda Accords in that price range on the left side of the page.
Users also see the current average asking price for that make and model Honda in the Chicago area ($14,090 at press time) and local Oodle averages for the same model in 2005 and 2006.
Users who don’t see listings to suit their taste or who are looking for a relatively hard-to-find car or property can set an e-mail alert that will notify them immediately when a listing that meets their needs comes into Oodle’s database.
Donato said that users beginning a search for a product in an online classified listing usually do a number of searches simply to get a sense of price ranges. “We watched people shopping for a used car, and found that their first 20 or 30 searches were aimed at understanding what the market price was, and what was a ‘good deal’. Once they understood that, then they snapped into a hunting mode and were ready to jump on a bargain.
“We’ve tried to compress that into two steps, quickly showing them the market information and then letting them set up an alert system so they can hunt more easily.”
Donato said future refinements to the interface will let car shoppers calculate the optimum balance of mileage, year and price for cars in their local areas — to figure out how more much you’d need to pay for a 2003 Accord with 40,000 miles compared to a 2002 model, for example.
“All this data comes from watching people shop and figuring out what questions they need to ask themselves before they buy,” he said. “Our job is not to be just a search engine but to serve as a shopping application for classifieds. The Oodle Index tool lets users use local market data to guide their search and thus their buying behavior.”
Oodle, which claims to be the largest online index of classified ads, aggregates Web listings in partnership with other sites but does not accept ads directly. The company earns revenue primarily by white-branding classified search platforms for other Web sites through the Oodle Partner Network.
