There are quite a large number of estate agents in the Algarve running under a franchise. The advantage about this, is that the franchise usually has just one large website that all agents use. It can help in your property search.

Here is a link I have provided listing some of the more common franchise agents: Algarve Franchise Estate Agents

Property portal sites are websites that display property listings from many different agents. Type in "International Property" in the google search box and click on the first link that comes up, and you will see what I mean.

A search engine is a website that you can use, to type in a a phrase and get a list of other websites that pertain to your "searched" phrase. Search engines list the results usually in order of relevance and importance to your particular query, but the way they sort out what is relevant and what is important differs from search engine to search engine. So the first piece of advice is - Do not limit your searches to just one search engine as the results will often differ.

Using search engines such as Google or Yahoo to search for specific property can be a bit frustrating as it is very easy not be specific enough, and just get too much information to make any sense.

Have you noticed the adverts on the right and bottom of AlgarveAgents.com?

These are called google "adwords". Don't be afraid of them, they are just adverts people have paid to be there, and they can sometimes be more relevant than the terms you searched with. The reason why people pay for these adverts is that it is extremely difficult for a website to get within the first 2 pages of a google search. - (statistically people only look at the first 2 pages when they use search engines).

Adwords are context sensitive, which means they only show advertisments that are relevant to the website you are looking at.

The problem with using search engines is that it becomes a bit of an art to be able to sift through the billions of possible results to get the property you want. And even if you get the right search result, the property could have already been sold, as search engines take "snapshots" of websites that are constantly changing with new and sold properties.

A more methodical approach is to find estate agents websites and search each individual agents property portfolio.