Is trulia cloaking? Interesting Sphin story

webmaster · 06-27-2008, 12:41 AM

http://sphinn.com/story/55504 - When you click through be prepared for a VERY long wait, and it might crash your browser (Hope it doesn't) but basically the blog post being Sphunn is accusing Trulia of cloaking for the Google user agent.

I have for the most part tried to stay on the sidelines with the whole Trulia deal, but this sort of gossip I always find interesting for some reason (I guess because I want to see how it plays out with Google) - if in fact they are cloaking, I can't see how Google could ignore it.

John Allen · 06-27-2008, 06:02 AM

Seems pretty clear....Here is Google's definition of cloaking from http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...delivery.html:

"Cloaking: Serving different content to users than to Googlebot. This is a violation of our webmaster guidelines. If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you're in a high-risk category. A program such as md5sum or diff can compute a hash to verify that two different files are identical."

RESteve · 06-27-2008, 07:58 AM

I saw this this morning; pretty interesting! I'm particularly curious on the explanations that Trulia will (hopefully) offer to explain their use of this technique.

Seems fairly obvious that this is a "google no-no".

Eric Blackwell · 06-27-2008, 08:00 AM

I just posted on it at the Bloodhound Blog...including a new post that Bramlett made. It is still photos of what they are doing. Here's a link to the BHB post.

Eric Blackwell · 06-27-2008, 08:25 AM

For the record, I think this TRULY defines how they view "partners"...they clearly see them as "lackeys" in my view...Somebody that they can get over on...

Something for us all to keep in mind when they call us, as REALTORS -- "partner"

Best;

Eric

ericbramlett · 06-27-2008, 08:26 AM

Sorry for the long wait, guys. I put up a pictorial and linked it to the video.

ericbramlett · 06-27-2008, 08:28 AM

Also...I don't really see how there could be any explanation other than a plain-ol' cloak. Serving google bot one page, and users another is the definition of cloak. It's easy to see why they're doing it - they're pumping their city pages. Stupid, stupid move on their part, and I think it shows what their SEO team thinks of our level of SEO competency.

Discover Davis Homes · 06-27-2008, 08:43 AM

My guess is that a lot of their "partners" do not tend to focus on SEO and do not know what to look for. I am also guessing that Trulia's response will be that someone made a mistake and most of the "partners" will belive them.

brandonre · 06-27-2008, 08:53 AM

I am sure they will spin this one as they spin everything else and just assume we are all idiots, pretty brazen stuff. Good work if you can get away with.

Quote:

Also...I don't really see how there could be any explanation other than a plain-ol' cloak.

Malok · 06-27-2008, 09:25 AM

Trulia has some very capable "politicians" on staff that do damage control for them.

And given that most of their "partners" are fairly ignorant regarding the whole SEO concept (or are probably paid) - all Trulia has to do is get a smooth talker to claim its a mistake, that Trulia cares about their partner relationships, visit their blog for discussion and they'll likely believe them.

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