Over the past few months, we've been publishing a series of articles that evaluates the features and benefits of the top portals. So far, we've explored how property search portals protect your brand and help you build your brand with agents. Today, we're going to look at the final piece of the puzzle - how portals support you in building your brand with consumers.

When beginning their home buying journey, portals are often the first place a consumer goes. This means they're crucial in building initial awareness of your brand. As in our previous articles, we're going to evaluate how portals accomplish this. Here's the criteria we'll be using today:

• Broker attribution on search results
• Link to broker source
• Photos and property descriptions

Please note that two items we've previously discussed in this series are also crucial components in building your brand: The placement of broker attribution on the property details page and listings accuracy.

Though we covered it in our first article of this series, the importance of listings accuracy cannot be overstated. It's tied to how consumers view your brand—inaccurate listings that result in potential buyers calling on properties that have been sold or pending leads to distrust in your company. Make it a point in 2015 to understand when and where your listings appear online, how publishers handle your data, and how frequently your data is refreshed.

1. Broker attribution on search results

In our last article, we discussed attribution of the listing agent/broker on the property details page. Repetition is key to building your brand, so there's another place that broker attribution needs to be in order to increase awareness of your company in the consumer's mind.

The search results page is the first place a prospect will encounter your brand's name. Simply scrolling through the list of properties on this page will reveal which brokerages have the most listings in the area and price range that the consumer is searching for. If the consumer is not yet working with a brokerage, repeated exposure to your company's name on multiple listings may influence them to reach out to you.

Each of the three major portals offer broker attribution on search results. However, Zillow only lists the broker on premium listings, while realtor.com and Trulia give the broker credit on all active listings. However, only Trulia provides attribution on sold properties, which also helps build your brand and credibility, especially with sellers looking to partner with a reputable and successful real estate professional.

• Trulia - Yes, for all, including sold listings
• Zillow - For premium listings only
• realtor.com® - Yes, for all active, but not sold listings