Metro Brokers Blog

There is a lot of fuss in the real estate blogosphere about an interpretation by the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of REALTORS® (MIBOR) of the so-called “anti-scraping” rule in the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) Multiple Listing Policy.

The policy states the following:

Participants must protect IDX information from misappropriation by employing reasonable efforts to monitor and prevent “scraping” or other unauthorized accessing, reproduction, or use of the MLS database.

This rule is intended to keep websites from extracting listings from NAR member websites (such as metrobrokers.com) and re-displaying the listings on their website, passing it off as their own data. We all agree this is a good rule, as it keeps others from stealing our listing data.

However, MIBOR has interpreted the rule to classify search engines like Google as “Scrapers,” and they are forcing all Indianapolis brokers and agents to prevent Google from indexing their websites. At the NAR mid-year conference, NAR initially rejected MIBOR’s ruling, but two days later accepted a referral back to committee, which is kind of like an appeal.

Now we have to wait until the November NAR conference to learn how this will play out. This ruling can affect everyone in real estate across the country.

Keep reading to understand the true impact of this policy.

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