• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 8, 2010

First search. Then display. Then offline media. Then mobile. Google's next big advertising land grab could well be real estate, and anything to do with it. In an application filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Thursday, Google has registered a patent claim for a new technology that would serve three-dimensional, panoramic real estate ads onto maps and other online pages when users are searching geographic regions.

The filing claims the technology would enable Google to replace or "augment" geographic views of properties with enhanced advertising features that could transform the way people search and evaluate real estate.

"The techniques include providing a geographic view of a property within an online property management system, identifying a region of interest in the geographic view, analyzing the geographic view to locate one or more promotional features within the geographic view positioned upon a real property region, providing a user-selectable link associated with the region of interest in the geographic view, receiving a request for the region of interest in the geographic view via the user-selectable link, receiving data to alter at least one of the behavior or the appearance of the region of interest, storing the data in association with the geographic view, and updating the region of interest within the geographic view based upon the received data," the patent filing's abstract reads.

The technology appears to have implications well beyond the real estate marketplace, and could be part of a wave of new applications for enhancing or augmenting any kind of property-based search advertising, including panoramic, three-dimensional views of retail marketers.

"For example, a drop-down menu could be displayed, offering a product listing, customer reviews, and/or a discount offer for the coffee shop associated with the user-selectable logo," the filing details. "Selection of one of the options from the first grouping of information can provide the user with a second display of information associated with the feature (e.g., menu, coupon code, hours, etc.). Other levels of presentation are possible."

News of the filing was first reported by Google rumors blog GoRumors.

The patent was filed by Ryan Hickman, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as "Squeaky Wheel at Google."