As the search engines and alternative online classifieds continue to build their brands and their content -- and capture national attention -- what's happening with Realtor.com?

From Yahoo, Trulia and Oodle to GoogleBase and Zillow, non-industry companies are attracting big business."? It's not just the one-on-one classified ads that are helping them either."? Last week Oodle announced a partnership with iHouseFinder -- a national source for real estate data."? With the buzz about Trulia and GoogleBase of late, they are most certainly courting additional data partners as well."?

Among non-real-estate-industry search engines there's a race to integrate real estate data on a large scale."? But what's the big attraction for agents?"? How about enough eyeballs to rival Realtor.com, free ads with very few limits on content, their own contact info on every ad and global exposure for starters!"?

The greater threat to Realtor.com, however, is what those sites offer to the consumer."? Let's break it down:

• Trusted, unbiased source
• Keyword oriented search capabilities
• Fewer clicks to get the info you want
• Lightening fast search
• Multiple photos
• Lengthy descriptions
• Easy to read maps
• Links to more information

Certainly Realtor.com has the data, for which they have worked so hard to obtain through the years, but are they losing their foothold on the market?"? Are they positioning themselves so that the average consumer will go to the Realtor.com site instead of something on Yahoo or Google, etc.?

Don't get me wrong, Realtor.com has fought a hard battle to obtain listing data and find a way to sustain the financial model, and are still the foremost site for national listing data and traffic."? Their model has worked for many Realtors and consumers alike, driving eyeballs and solid leads."? However, as the years have worn on, have they remained competitive?"? Or have the hiccups in the business model only blazed a trail for other non-industry sites -- sites that have no interest in furthering the National Association of Realtors agenda?"?

That begs the question: what's Realtor.com's plan to stay competitive in the Web full of "?spiders and crawlers?"? 'As for me, I'm going to clean out my Cookies,"?download some more Java and watch.