Why we publish our listings on our own website, not just on a portal
On a portal, a property presentation is a record in someone else’s template; on our own website, it is a document with an author, an order and margins. The difference is not in the graphics but in how much of the listing (nabídka) fits inside. This text goes through both formats element by element.
The portal is a form, our own website is a sheet
A listing is not entered on a portal but imported. A data record leaves the real estate software, becomes a row in a database and is displayed in a template shared by all adverts (inzerát). The order of the fields is therefore not determined by whoever prepared the listing, the description is a single text field without structure, and alongside it runs a recommendation strip with other listings.
This is not a reproach: a portal is a search engine and has to bring over a hundred thousand listings into a comparable form. It simply follows that a listing on a portal cannot be an argument. It can be a record.
What a portal’s advertising rules allow and what they do not
The Sreality.cz advertising rules (Pravidla inzerce Sreality.cz) are public and speak directly about presentation.
Contacts and links. Contacts for persons, companies or websites belong only in the “Kontakt” (contact) section (rule 99); in the text of the advert, “URL links or non-functional internet links or domains” are prohibited (rule 104).
Capitals and superlatives. Text written in capital letters other than official names, and “superlatives and unverifiable information about quality”, are prohibited (rule 104). That does not bother us.
Logo in the photograph. A photo “must not contain a separate logo of the real estate broker” (rule 111). A watermark is allowed, but at most 150 × 70 px and with 30% transparency (rule 113).
One price. Importing “identical property listings with a different or speculative price” is prohibited (rule 108).
Technical requirements: at least 480 × 360 px and at most 1920 × 1080 px, an aspect ratio of 4:3, JPG, at most 5 MB (rule 112); an advert can be published from three photographs upwards, and a portrait-format photo has to be adjusted.
That is the core of the problem. A 4:3 ratio means that a photograph of a staircase, a window or a ceiling — anything taller than it is wide — gets into the advert cropped, or not at all. For a flat in a tenement building (činžovní dům), that is a substantial part of what is worth seeing.
And a consequence people do not like to talk about: an advert cannot link to the listing’s sheet. The bridge between the portal and our own website does not run through a click but through the first phone call.
Property presentation as a document: what the drawing language is
The website is built on the language of construction drawings (stavební dokumentace); it recurs in five elements.
The title block (popisové pole) is the table in the corner of a drawing with information on what is on the sheet and when it was made. On a listing, it carries the three facts everyone asks about first — layout, area, price — plus the sheet number and the revision date.
A dimension line (kóta) is a line with arrows and a number in the middle; it gives a dimension. With us, it carries the area and sits below the panel with the main photograph, not in the middle of a paragraph.
Sheet (list) means that every page of the website is a numbered drawing and the listing is one of them.
Numbered figures. The photographs are not a gallery but annexes to the sheet: Fig. 01 to Fig. 56. The sentence “that view is Fig. 34” cannot be said on a portal. The fifth element, the site plan (situace), has its own section below.
The whole sheet can be printed or saved as a PDF including the photographs and the site plan, because it has its own print layout (@media print). A property brochure (expozé) is thus created by itself, without a second round of preparation.
Site plan: our own drawing of the surroundings instead of someone else’s map
There is a map on the sheet, but it is not someone else’s. The base data are downloaded once from the open data of OpenStreetMap and converted to metres from the building; from them the page draws a drawing in the same line as the rest of the website:
- the masses of buildings in light grey, the listing’s building in black and marked with corner marks;
- streets by class with rotated names, greenery as 45° hatching, water as a light area;
- a true scale — 200 m really is 200 m at any screen width — a north arrow, and below the drawing the nearest metro, tram, park and school with straight-line distances.
No third-party base map, no key for someone else’s service, no third-party cookies, no consent banner — and the site plan is printed together with the sheet. The drawback is just as concrete: when the data source does not respond, the site plan is not drawn and another attempt is made at the next processing run. On a portal, the map is always there.
Where our own website is weaker than a portal
Three things that make the sheet alone not enough.
Traffic. A portal has its own audience; our own website does not and has to bring it in. A listing published only with us reaches people who already know about us — an advantage in a discreet sale, a loss of reach in an ordinary one.
The cost of reach can be calculated for a portal, but not for our own website. According to the Sreality.cz price list valid from 11 July 2026, a sale advert costs a real estate broker (realitní zprostředkovatel) CZK 50 per day excluding VAT, with a volume discount for more adverts, and one boost to the top of the results (topnutí) CZK 25, at most three times a day. In a model with a single advert, ninety days come to CZK 4,500, with one boost a day another CZK 2,250, together CZK 6,750 excluding VAT, i.e. CZK 8,167.50 at the 21 % rate. Beyond the website already built, nothing is paid for a sheet — but that website cost many times more and continues to be maintained. For a brokerage with a few listings a year, the website therefore does not pay for itself through savings on advertising alone; where the threshold lies depends on its costs and on how many listings pass through it.
Our own mistakes are more visible on the sheet. The photographs leave the real estate software with a burned-in white label with the logo along the top edge. On our own website it is unnecessary — the logo is in the header — and on the contact sheet it repeats fifty-six times. The addresses of the exported photographs are signed, so a clean version cannot be requested and the fix lies on the software side.
Why we publish on both, and in what order
The order is always the same. First the sheet is made — measurement, floor plan with dimensions, photographs, site plan, texts, title block — and only from it is the advert filled in. An abstract can be made from a document; a document cannot be made from an abstract.
The portal then brings people in. The sheet does what the portal is not allowed to: it holds the listing together, names the building by its own name instead of an advert headline and carries the representation label where we have one. For listings handled under exclusive representation (výhradní zastoupení), the difference is greatest, because only there does it pay to spend the preparation budget before there is anything to collect. The finished sheets are in the overview of property listings.
What can be measured on each side
The portal shows the brokerage daily statistics of clicks and costs per advert and the number of impressions in users’ saved searches. Those are figures about the advert, not about the listing.
The sheet measures other things: which figures were opened, how far the reader read, whether they printed the sheet, whether they came back. The number of clicks only tells you that the advert needs more boosting; the fact that, say, thirty people open the site plan and nobody reads as far as the price tells you that the problem is the price, not the reach. To be honest, though: a single sheet gets too few visits for statistics. They are read as indications, not as measurement.
Annex: analysis of the same listing on a portal and on our own website
Model listing: a 4+kk flat (four rooms plus a kitchenette), 128 m², a tenement building in Vinohrady, CZK 24,900,000. The data are model data; the annotations refer to the elements by the numbers in brackets.
Block 1 — header, identification and price
| Element | On the portal | On the sheet on our own website |
|---|---|---|
| Headline (1) | “Sale of a flat 4+kk 128 m², Prague 2 – Vinohrady” | the building’s own name, the address below it |
| Identification (2) | assignment number in small print in the footer | sheet number and revision date |
| Parameters (3) | vertical list of twenty rows following the template | title block of three cells: layout, area, price |
| Price (4) | CZK 24,900,000, next to it the portal’s price map | CZK 24,900,000, the area separately as a dimension line |
Block 2 — image section
| Element | On the portal | On the sheet on our own website |
|---|---|---|
| Number of photos (5) | 56 in a strip, the import accepts at most 100 | Fig. 01 to Fig. 56 as annexes to the sheet |
| Ratio and file (6) | 4:3, 480 × 360 to 1920 × 1080 px, JPG, at most 5 MB | any ratio, export at 1920 × 1920 px |
| Order (7) | as the import sends them | following the viewing scenario: entrance, main space, view |
| Logo in the photo (8) | watermark at most 150 × 70 px, 30% transparency | has no business being there, still there for now |
Block 3 — text, surroundings and output
| Element | On the portal | On the sheet on our own website |
|---|---|---|
| Description (9) | one text field, no capitals or URLs | structured text and technical description side by side |
| Link to the website (10) | prohibited in the description, contact only in the “Kontakt” section | the sheet is the destination, not a link |
| Surroundings (11) | third-party base map with advertising | site plan: our own drawing, 200 m scale |
| Neighbours (12) | recommendation strip with cheaper flats in the same street | only our other listings |
| Print and PDF (13) | portal template including advertising | the whole sheet with photographs and site plan |
| Measurement (14) | clicks, costs, saved searches | figures opened, reading depth, printing, return visits |
Annotations to the analysis
(1) The portal assembles the headline from code lists so that it can be sorted. On the sheet, the headline is the name of the building.
(2) The assignment number is internal; by the sheet number, the listing can be found even a year later.
(3) The template shows everything as equally important; the title block shows three facts large and moves the rest aside.
(4) The price map (cenová mapa) next to the price is a feature for the portal and a negotiating disadvantage for the seller.
(5) A strip of photos is flicked through in a few seconds; a numbered annex stays under its number even after a revision.
(6) The hardest constraint of the advert. A flat five metres high cannot be shown in 4:3.
(7) The order is half of the presentation; the import preserves it only if it is already right in the source.
(8) Rule 111 prohibits a logo, rule 113 allows a watermark. Our problem is the opposite.
(9) The ban on superlatives is a good rule, it just comes without structure. Without subheadings, a longer text does not get read.
(10) That is why there is no point in counting clicks from the portal to the website. There will be none, because there must not be any.
(11) The difference is not in accuracy but in the framing: the drawing shows walking distance, not a paid marker.
(12) A portal has to offer alternatives, otherwise it would not be a search engine; the seller pays for it with a lower price from their own street.
(13) From the sheet, a brochure is created at the press of a key; from the advert, a page with a banner.
(14) The portal figures say whether the advert is being seen; the figures from the sheet say where the reader stopped.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth putting a property on several portals? For reach, yes; for price, rather not. A repeated advert is a signal that the seller is in a hurry, and negotiation starts from the lowest of the prices.
Does a property have to be on Sreality to sell? It does not, but in an ordinary sale it is the fastest route to people who are looking right now. Advertising a property on a portal and our own sheet do two different things.
Why does your website have more photographs than the advert on the portal? Because the sheet has no restricted aspect ratio. Portrait photos that do not fit into 4:3 end up cropped, or do not get into the advert at all.
Why is there no link to your website in the portal advert? The rules prohibit URL links in the text of an advert and allow contacts only in the “Kontakt” section. The link to the sheet therefore goes out only after the first call.
Can I ask for the listing to be only on your website, without a portal? Yes, and for some assignments we deliberately do just that. The price is less reach: it addresses people from our database and from the listing’s surroundings, not the whole market.
Key takeaways
A portal and our own website are not two variants of the same thing. A portal is a search engine meant to find the listing; the sheet is a document meant to defend it, and that is why it comes first. Anyone who reverses this — first the advert, then a website made from it — gets only a bigger advert. The difference between 4:3 and any aspect ratio, between a single text field and a structured document, and between someone else’s map and our own site plan cannot be made up for by paying for boosts.