We place the “honored” in quotes based on the nature of the site that selected YoChicago as one of the top 6 real estate sites in Chicago, and the only site to receive the highest score on each of the factors considered in the selections.
Movoto is a real estate search engine whose business model is based on generating leads for real estate agents and charging them referral fees. Agents who’ve commented on Movoto at Trulia don’t hold it in very high regard.
According to Movoto’s site:
At Movoto, we know that the number one factor in your real estate experience is the quality of your real estate agent, and we’ve made it our business to connect you with the best.
…
Movoto uses exclusive industry criteria to identify the most professional, personable, and experienced real estate agents. We look at client feedback, transaction volume, professional designations and much more to ensure that we recruit the very best agents in any given local market from our well-respected partner brokerages.
I searched for agents at Movoto in markets where I would recognize the names of many of “the very best agents.” Movoto’s search returned a list of agents I’d never heard of, and who appeared to have little or no familiarity with those markets.
Movoto’s email alerting us to our selection suggested that we “feel free to share your achievement with the embeddable ‘Best in Chicago’ badge at the bottom of the post.” We’ll take a pass on that, since we don’t attach any value to awards that are thinly-disguised attempts to secure back-links from popular websites. We also don’t want to help steer consumers to agents whose qualifications may be misrepresented based on their willingness to pay referral fees.
We recommend that you ignore the “best” and “top” awards that you see – although less frequently than in previous years – on real estate agent websites, unless those awards are from a company you know and respect.