Consumers will often contact us so that they can be provided with a copy of the previous advertisement for a property. This article will advise who we can share this information with and what to do when you receive a query like this.
- Who we can share an archived advert with?
- What do we do with these requests?
- What's a ghost listing and how do I know it's still publicly available?
Who we can share an archived advert with?
We can only share the archived listing of a property from the Best Price Guide with the person that owned it at the time it was marketed on Rightmove. This is due to the information being commercial data but also, personal data as the property images may contain details that can personally identify someone.
What do we do with these requests?
This type of query is looked after by our specialist Data Protection Team (DPO) so the ticket you have needs to be scenario'd in Freshdesk over to them. The team will contact the consumer directly asking them to provide evidence that they were the homeowner at the time of the property being marketed.
If the consumer cannot provide evidence that they were the homeowner at the time, we cannot share the archived listing with them. The only time we can share the details without ID or to someone that wasn't the homeowner is if the ghost listing is still publicly available.
What's a ghost listing and how do I know it's still publicly available?
When an agent archives a property from Rightmove, Google will sometimes store the archived listing. The content of the property is still visible and the images will be slightly greyed out. This is what we call a ghost listing.
If we can find a ghost listing for the property, this can be shared with the consumer by email as it's still publicly available and they'd be able to find it through Google by searching themselves.
You can find out if a ghost listing exists as long as you have the property ID for the archived advert. Once you have this, search the website address in the same format as below with the property ID.
rightmove.co.uk/property/propertyID
When you search the link, if it looks like the below screenshot, it means a ghost listing exists and is still publicly available so it can be shared with the consumer.
