After doing some research today, it looks like Trulia is on the rise in the search engine rankings in the Houston real estate market. Houston is the 4th largest city in the United States, and the largest in Texas; it’s a gorilla of real estate markets in my opinion.
Trulia ranking well doesn’t surprise me. Their site is well optimized to rank well in search engines, and their site is truly innovative in the tools it provides to real estate consumers.
However, what does surprise me is that real estate agents in Houston are actually helping Trulia rank better than them. Why? It could be a for a couple of reasons:
- They don’t really care about rankings, and are perfectly fine with intentionally doing this.
- They are uninformed.
I seem to feel that it’s more a matter of the agents being uninformed than them not really caring.
It Gets Worse
What I find in common with many of these agent sites is that they are all from one provider. Number1Expert is a firm that builds real estate sites for agents, and for a fee, the agents can use them to procure business in the form of real estate leads.
At the bottom of each of these sites/templates is a Trulia Widget, which also contains a backlink with the appropriate anchor text of “Houston Real Estate”. Guess where they point to? The link the Trulia is now ranking top 10 for! Did Number1Expert and Trulia form some kind of deal to get this done?
I found 8 real estate agents with a vast multitude of links per agent doing this, and they all had a Number1Expert template. The agents sites are linked below.
If an agent on this list would like their link removed, it will be done so immediately. Simply contact me to let me know.
- http://www.teamjudy.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.kaytownend.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.barbarastraty.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.donburns.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.shereechang.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.curtiswarren.com/myhomes.asp
- http://www.countonchris.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=504611&P=20
- http://www.dianesanders.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=708956&P=20
This is a part of the reason why Trulia is ranking in the top 10 for the term “Houston Real Estate”; I promise you that. Do the agents doing this know what they are actually doing? Do they care about their own search engine rankings?
When it comes to the SERPS, it is my opinion that Trulia is a competitor. Agents in the top 10 rankings for pertinent search results get real estate leads from that ranking position.
So in theory, I suppose you could say that Trulia is also a competitor to that agent’s business, since they’re ranking position (if higher) could possibly take leads away from that agent and disperse it elsewhere. That’s a whole other debate of it’s own, but why help your competition?
-SC-
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May 14th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Trulia wants us to fill our their database with our listing info, and they want us to link to them to help them rank well on Google. They return the favor by giving us the option to pay them to feature our listings on their site.
Agents need to realize that businesses like Trulia are just middlemen trying to force their way between agents and customers. Agents - why participate?!
May 15th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Austin Homes - AGREED!
I’ve posted homes on both Zillow and Trulia - Nada, zip, nill results. They aren’t really that good anyway. I don’t know what all the hype is about.
I get way more leads and traffic through craigslist - and have received more leads from backpage than the two of them combined. Not that I’m happy with backpage results, but nobody has ever heard of backpage yet the response rate is better.
Agents need to stop letting Trulia and the likes use them for their content. They want to get rid of us, not help us.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
My comment as I posted elsewhere:
Hi!
We absolutely do not pay Number1Expert for any links. The TruliaMap integration was an opportunity they saw to enhance their client websites with a valuable free tool from Trulia, as it drives more clicks into their site. Sadly, nothing scandalous here.
For some clarity on much of the misinformation and confusion going on here and elsewhere, please take the time to read our blog post -
http://www.truliablog.com/2008/05/15/back-to-basics-trulia-was-built-to-help-improve-your-roi/
Regards,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia
May 16th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Thanks for stopping by, Rudy! Here’s another quick question: Do the agents have the opportunity to turn off the widgets in their N1E templates?
May 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
trulia?
never heard it before..
hmm.. maybe i try it
May 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’m seeing yahoo and austinhomesearch move up in addition to trulia. The result is seeing rankings for individual agents dropping. I understand that most online activity on real estate websites is just looking at homes, but there is real value on some agent sites in terms of educating out of area buyers about the area.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:49 am
I agree, Lake Travis Realtor. Some agents are left saying, “Why the middleman?”.
My gut feeling says that Trulia and others with similar business models have the best intentions, but I get concerned with uninformed agents inadvertently hurting themselves and not knowing about it.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
You are right about most agents not knowing. The vast majority of Realtors know nothing about SEO. Many of them don’t even know what a “no follow” link is.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Great post. I notice Rudy didn’t answer your last question. I believe the widgets can be changed to a “nofollow”.
I posted an article at SEOMoz about Trulia’s web ranking strategies http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/trulias-web-ranking-strategies-come-under-fire