What’s The Most Meaningless Statistic?
Found on Trulia:
Average listing price in Chino, CA went down 1.12% to $336,264 from prior week
This means what? Nothing! If ten or a hundred new listings went up on the market and one in particular was priced as realistically as an agent could convince the client, then the whole average could be skewed by several percentage points, depending on the number of new listings. Next week perhaps, someone else will report that the average listing price is up by some percentage.
I’ve been working with a client, optimizing his web presence in an exclusive area of Palm Beach County FL. PGA National homes, a community in Palm Beach Gardens that is both exclusive and only has around 4000 homes total has properties in the millions. What kind of statistics would week to week listings there yield.
Someone must think those numbers motivate people. They forget that people buy, on some level, based on an emotional response. Very few cut the deal based absolutely and strictly on mathematical analysis for anything. Very few, like Warren Buffet, have that kind of discipline.
My work in Orange County SEO shows that a lot of people compete for the wrong message and keywords in Google.
