Trulia Lied. People Cried.

Good on you Eric for getting the word out there about these bloodsuckers.  I don't why, but I am particualarly fired up about it this evening.  Seriously, the idea of selling my own listings back to me?  I just wish all agents were smart enough to read blogs like this and the BHB.  Actually...no I don't   But I wish they would realize Trulia is their competition and stop feeding them listings so they can outrank them and ultimatley charge them for their own buyers.  UGH.

Thanks MIke...I feel kinda vidicated that they were so open about it...and then to tell Ryan that it was to prevent link spam...that was the best. Congrats on a great job on your expose BTW--nicely done as well.  

Good information Eric, thanks.  They more I learn about the e-real-estate world, the more I realize there is to learn (and I felt I was reasonably tech savvy when I got serious about the on-line RE world). One eternal truth this brings to mind - people (and in this situation businesses) usually have an agenda...now, that agenda can sometimes be good, or to do the right thing, but it can also sometimes be just plain self-serving.  I hate to be cynical, but my guess is Trulia isn't taking listings out of the goodness of their heart.  Hopefully lots of agents read this blog and the source blog you referenced in it.  

I second that Eric. I set up a profile a couple of months ago on Trulia when our brokerage made a stupid agreement with them. My public profile page on Trulia has a PR2 and have my one (dofollow) link pointing back to my website, but there is no reciprocation on my part. Real estate agents need to work together to keep the lead generation companies out of our business.

As I've posted on other blogs - if you like finding buyers in Trulia voices, then check out www.city-data.com/forum - it has very similar functions, is VERY non-commercial, and won't end up beating you in the SERPs and taking those leads from you in the future.

I just left a comment on the bloodhound blog, but I am not sure if it took or not, so I will post it here just in case Just wanted to chime in here on the Zillow / Trulia thing, last time I checked Zillow was not passing any link love from listings either - instead of using 302 redirects they implement the onclick method of blocking outbound link benefits (Same as PR web) - (Read Matt Cutts comments here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/) And what else (I think) is missed is that BOTH Trulia and Zillow provide backlinks (Dofollow) from the profile pages (But neither from the posts, which is the crux of the issue here) - so if you are going to crucify one be sure to acknowledge both the differences AND the similarities - Zillow does not give you link love from listings either. I wrote a post trying to "bait" zillow into upping their SEO offerings in this thread http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread21407.html Where I wrote: "So I put it forth to you members - if there was an SEO benefit to creating a profile at Zillow, would this change your status as a participant, or would you continue to boycott based on the principal of helping the competition amass content?" Drew Myers (Who has always been a class act at least in my dealings with him) responded clarifying their position and reminded us of link pop from profiles. But my question is - for BOTH Trulia and Zillow - don't you realize that the best SEO is about building relationships, and by properly acknowledging your content partners you will actually GAIN authority? Your page rank hoarding is a short sighted SEO strategy that alienates you from the MOST powerful allies (The SEO savvy Realtors) - and honestly, there will always be those that dislike assisting their competition, but for those willing to take the trade (Link love for my inventory) you have a lot to "gain" and very little to loose - Your argument regarding "protection from spam" quite frankly IS BS and you guys know it - you trust the content but not the source? That is not the true spirit or purpose with which the nofollow attribute or any other link blocking method was designed for.

Hi Eric! It's good to know where you stand on Trulia, but I need to clarify a few things. The spam comment pertains to the nofollows on the web references in Trulia Voices.  IE, someone asks – “I’m a first time homebuyer and I need help understanding different mortgage products.  Help!”. Spammers (not agents) reply:  “Buy Viagra now!” without a nofollow link. Yeah, that would be bad for all – consumer, real estate agent, Trulia.  It’s standard practice on forums (of which Trulia Voices is one) to include nofollows on comments to prevent this behavior.  Check it out.  Alternatively, as I have mentioned many times before, we give lots of link love to agents via their profiles and we give them the choice to pick what site, blog or listing they want to send the yummy google juice too. Not bad in my eyes......   I hope your readers read through the comments on BHB post (including mine) and consider what their home seller clients would want.  Wouldn't they want their homes listed on every site where consumers are searching? Not to mention, the fastest growing real estate website in the United States - Trulia. Rudy

Wouldn't they want their homes listed on every site where consumers are searching? Man...I'm really sick of this response.  Trulia doesn't sell listings.  MLS/IDX sells listings.

Eric - I thought real estate agents sold listings?

Absolutely - real estate agents properly staging the property, helping their clients properly price the property, creating effective print media, effective online media that can be displayed on the MLS/IDX, posting the listings on effective sites like craigslist, and then when an offer comes in, the real work begins. Rudy, I'd be a lot better with you guys if you would just admit that you're competing with us.

We are helping agents Eric. We value all our personal relationships w/ scores of brokers and agents around the country. Sorry you don't see it that way.   Rudy

The mantra is that Trulia is here for us! Not so. If not for us there would be no you. I know you guys would like to think that you are helping agents and I suppose on some level you are. However, if trulia did not exist, I assure you, we would all get by just fine. Are listings would sell - in the same amount of time they are now and the buyers would find us through other means. Don't pretend that there is something new here. I do not believe there is any "added value" to Trulia in and of itself although you have done an excellent job of packaging and positioning the product in such a way that you can make believers out of many. Remember, you only stay relevant if the real estate industry thinks you are.

Once again Ryan, I respect your opinion. But at this point, I think we'll have to agree that we disagree and move on. We provide value to consumers, agents and brokers everyday as I'm sure you do too. I wish you nothing but the best. - Rudy

Rudy; I am sorry as well, but I do not see it that way. As Galen mentioned in his post, I am sure that your "trusted partners" whom your company no followed with the express purpose of getting past them in the SERPS (provided they understand the technicalities of the web) would see your relationship with them as less than a bargain as well. You are a nice guy, Rudy...but the facts just aren't on your side here. Best; Eric

@Morgan--Excellent points. I had forgotten about that post. Thanks for the insight and the reminder.  I will be sure to point that out in an upcoming post at BHB...I do want to be even handed.

I have to say Rudy, i also find that your argument is very old and lame.  Trulia is link hording, it is short sighted.  On the positive side, I consistently out rank Trulia for all my key words now,  so there.  Tell your coworkers over at Trulia that if they keep up with the screwing of their content providers and eventually Trulia will be hurt.

Nice discovery...I guess I wont be going to Trulia anymore

Hi, it's David G from Zillow, @Morgan - I posted this response on BHB but wanted to respond to this thread also ... Onclick is a javascript mechanism used for tracking clicks. It’s certainly not intended to blog SE-bots. As you may know, google hasn’t been very clear on this issue but you should note that SEO guru Andy Beard has proven that onclick can pass pagerank. You’ll find Andy’s analysis here: http://andybeard.eu/2007/09/onclick.html. We’re keeping an eye on this issue. If you learn anything new please let me know. If we learn that switching to another mechanism for counting clicks would also measurably improve the SEO benefit to our partners, we’d obviously be interested in making that change. The other topic that you and Drew discussed was indexing. Zillow certainly has of room for improvement there. We’ve made some recent gains and also have projects in the works that will ensure that the majority of the site is indexed.

I posted this over at bloodhound, but will here as well @ David from Zillow - Not to take this to far off track, but that article from Andy does not prove in the slightest that onclick passes pagerank, it is nothing more than a flawed test with no real empirical data to back it up - and there certainly is evidence from more credible source (Aka Matt Cutts) that strongly suggests such onclicks are “not” spiderable. It would take some dev time (I think you guys have some to spare) but why not use an image replacement technique to overlay a unique image over top of a textual link, and then track the clicks on the image using logs? There are certainly legit ways to track outbound traffic without having to gum up the works so to speak - as I said to Drew earlier, I would be happy to help you with this if you truly would like the help (Not selling my services here, I would be more than happy to do it for a thank you) - I have a vested interest in making sure my members and especially my clients have every SEO advantage available to them possible, so I win because our community wins and Zillow wins because they appear to be the good guy

@ Trulia, As agents and consumers we do not need you or others like you... Agents have ALL the MLS listings, where you only have some of the listings. No one in their right mind knowing that would search on 3rd party sites. As a real estate broker I do not feel obligated to post my listings everywhere possible, especially with websites that I am totally opposed to their existence, nor do I feel that I need to run print ads everywhere possible. I think our responsibility as REALTORS is to educate the public and other agents about the worthlessness of your business and others like you. There are much worse companies like eperks, but basically you are all bottom feeders in my opinion and should be avoided at all costs. I do commend you for getting on here and politely posting your opinions, as I just mentioned there are much worse companies but you all fall in the same category. You are trying to make a living off our hard work. Unfortunately I believe you will continue to thrive because the struggling agents and companies that do not know how to use the internet to their advantage think they need you. It is a shame, but the web savvy agents for the most part know just how worthless and damaging to our business your service is. @David from Zillow, what a disservice your company provides. As agents we waste a lot of time educating our clients that have been to your site, that your numbers are NOT accurate. In some cases they are and in many cases they are not even in the ballpark. Unfortunately when a seller is trying to figure out what their home is worth they tend to believe the highest they can find. So it makes it very difficult for those of us that are actually in this business and actually know our markets to convince a seller that their home could be worth $100,000.00 less than Zillow says its worth. What a complete disservice your business has done to thousands of people that sit on their homes for maybe an extra year because they believed Zillow was correct and the agent that knows the market didn’t have a clue. I personally would be truly ashamed of myself if I worked for Zillow and knew I had cost thousands of people so much money and heartache by misleading them. There should be a law against your business. I imagine you sleep at night thinking you work for a good company, but in my mind Zillow is not much different than Enron. Your business has cost many homeowners tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars because they held on believing your bogus numbers. Oh, and who really cares about the links from these guys. There is a much bigger problem here than links.

This is one subject that raises my bloodpressure everytime it come up!

@Morgan - It has nothing to do with appearances. If you really want to help, that would be awesome - thank you. Lets start by getting on the same page. I've read that Matt Cutts article you linked to several times and can't find where he addresses this issue. Please send me the info you're referring to [davidg AT aillow DOTCOM] so that I can have our developers and our resident SEO guru review Matts guidelines on this. If there's something there I would certainly like to get our team on the phone with you to figure out an alternative approach to tracking clicks. Thanks for the offer.

Hmmm,  Kind of funny, Trulia can react to these kinds of posts very fast, but you send anything to their customer service, about people creating false IDs and posting your information in a bad light on Trulia.com, they don't respond so quickly.  It has been over 24 hours already since the issue was reported to their customer service, and still no response. 

David, Thanks for being open to this.

Nor Zillow either

@ David-- I'd echo Ryan's sentiments here... You and I realize that I disagree with your fundamental business model, but i do appreciate your apparent willingness to link back to us if you can find a way that does in fact give you the tracking info that you want...that's what I understand, correct? That, IMO would definately help differentiate you in my mind more from the arrogance of Trulia's link hoarding schemes. And yes, they are schemes.

I am guessing that Rudy from Trulia will not be back to this particular blog post.

Thanks Ryan and Eric! Eric - Yes. PR is certainly part of the benefit we want to provide partners who post their listings on Zillow. Our understanding is that our current implementation of click tracking does not interfere with passing PR. I haven't heard any more from Morgan on this so I assume we're now on the same page.