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Are Online Serviced Office Agents Losing their Grip on Google?

The fight for new serviced office leads has used Google as the battle ground for a number of years with the vast majority of potential clients turning to the internet as a first port of call for their search.  It has been dominated by online office agents since the turn of the century, but is the operator fightback well and truly on?

Offices North West have been running a few searches for ‘serviced offices…” in key locations in our region and out of 50 front page results, only 21 online serviced office broker pages appeared in the natural listings.  The remaining 29 were not all operator sites, although many were directory pages where operators can list their office space for free, but it seems that more and more business centres sites are appearing right up there in the Google listings.

Perhaps the largest change has been in mind as operators look to compete with brokers rather than simply accepting ‘that’s just where our leads come from’.  Are online agents now being seen as another leads channel as opposed to the leads channel?  That stance would certainly make the most business sense, as a reliance on one broker could prove disastrous if their enquiries drop off.

Gaining a presence online does take effort and maintaining it requires even more!  However, it is perhaps easier now than ever before.  There are now a number of industry news pages, including ours, offering free publicity for relevant news stories and paid sponsorship opportunities.  Listings sites are also proving popular with the likes of Gumtree, VivaStreet and OfficeSpaceFinders giving free advertising space.

Influential news site Choregus looked at the industry as a whole with their Serviced Office Space Tube Map and identified who is making their presence felt online and perhaps that pushed some other operators into action.  We are certainly seeing increased activity and perhaps online agents will look towards fixed monthly fees to sure up revenue streams as operators challenge their previously dominant online position.

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