I have been trying to think of a way to explain what has been going through my mind in plain english. Here’s my attempt:
When Galen first posted about Trulia’s aggressive no-following of listings links, it was a bit technical for many folks to follow, but it set off alarm bells everywhere. Then Eric Bramlett pointed out the SYSTEMIC, SECRETIVE, USE OF OPT OUT TRULIA WIDGETS ON NUMBER 1 EXPERT SITES.. (Also here.) Let me break it down so that it is more easy to grasp:
SYSTEMIC: Number One Expert applied them all at once (or very quickly) to a number of their templated real estate websites.
SECRETIVE: They put the widgets at the BOTTOM of an internal page (in most cases) BUT on one that usually gets GOOD authority from the front page of the site. This is secretive, because they will attract VERY little traffic and attention. Without checking their backlinks, we would not have known they were there. They are placed IMO where they will do VERY little good in keeping traffic and NO good in attracting traffic.
Also, they were secretive in that they did not let their clients know that they did this! They just took the prerogative and popped them on the templates. How do I know? I have asked several real estate agents who are their clients and NOT ONE of them knew that the widgets were there. PERIOD>
OPT OUT WIDGETS: This means that if you want to take these widgets off of your site you MUST call them and ask them to take them off of your site. This is the FIRST time (that I am aware of) of having a website provider slap THOUSANDS of widget links to another competiting site for the same LOCAL terms and MAKE YOU CALL TO GET IT REMOVED.
Why are MANY people saying that it looks like a paid link? It is because that is the ONLY thing we can think of why Number 1 Expert would do this! It puts their clients sites (In my opinon) at unneeded risk! They put TENS of THOUSANDS of links on their clients’ sites and they HAVE to know that it will get some scrutiny from Matt Cutts when Trulia starts ranking everywhere in the search engine results.
Oops. Let me be more clear. Matt Cutts is the Google guy who is tasked with being both an ombudsman to the webmaster community at large as well as heading up their SPAM team. Basically between Trulia and Number 1 Expert they have painted Google into a corner.
If Google does not address it and let’s it stand, then there will MORE that will and could do this. In a previous post’s comment, I used the example of a one franchise chain getting with one of the other major real estate website builders. It could be anyone though and NOT just in the real estate business. That is not a good prospect for them. They want RELEVANT search results and 10 TRULIA’S does not make for relevance.
If Google PENALIZES the Number 1 Expert sites, (as one might expect if they thought this was a PAID link scheme-penalize the SELLER), then they have punished a bunch of individual REALTORS just for the act of being a Number 1 Expert customer. These folks get hit and then just say, huh? What happened? …but Google cannot just penalize Number1expert.com either…because will not have a deterrent effect at all. But then what happens if they were in fact NOT paid? (as Trulia has claimed).
This is why it really bites to be the guy at Google who makes these calls.
If Google DEVALUES the links on these widgets, then at least they are not rewarding Trulia for doing this..
But why should Google have to take action at all? Just my opinion, but you guys at Number 1 Expert could EASILY make them OPT IN instead of OPT OUT. That seems to me to be a natural line of demarcation that is doing the right thing.
I LIKE good widgets. (and I cannot lie…GRIN) I use them on some of my blogs. I am HAPPY to link back to the creators of the widgets, theme designers and others who help make blogging easy and fun. So if someone wants to use the Trulia Widgets and you understand that there are links there. BEAUTIFUL. It is your blog and your call, because YOU UPLOADED THEM or CREATED THEM YOURSELF.
BUT, Number1Expert this is just one dog…calling on you to do the RIGHT thing and pull them down. Stop running the OPT OUT WIDGET MACHINE on REALTORS who have NO idea they are tilting the playing field in Trulia’s favor. Heck, most of them have no idea they are even there! You are putting your customers’ web presences in jeopardy and there is no reason for that. Are those widgets way down at the bottom of your /myhomes.asp pages REALLY worth that?
And Trulia…the part that really chaps me:
As Mike Farmer noted in his blog…No Agent Required. Hmmm…yeah…partners alright. In an abusive relationship, maybe. Do you guys realize how offensive that is to REALTORS? And yet you are using links from REALTOR sites all over the country to put those EXACT PAGES on the Top of Google.
Tsk. Tsk.
Ryan Ward says:
I see a blog post of my own coming here. I never paid for links, but, I did receive a 60 day penalty from Google for reciprocating links with other agents last summer.
Lesson learned on my end. Either earn your links based on your own merit and that of your website or jeopardize your entire online presence in hopes of achieving higher rankings by “gaming the system” through methods such as this or some other scheme.
In the comments on another post, I believe I pointed to a link that also looks like a paid link:
http://www.homethinking.com/seattle-Realtors-in-Washington.html
Check right above the Google Ads on the right hand side where it says “Seattle Homes For Sale on Trulia“
It looks like homethinking is part of the same network that owns realestatevoices.com as well
I don’t fault Trulia for trying to rank high – if they don’t, they might as well close up shop and go home. They aren’t REALLY adding value to the consumer by regurgitating information that already exists. It only works for them if they rank high in organic search results.
Here – even better!
Sponsor links should be nofollowed as they are paid, right? What do you see in the code found on this page?
Here is the page:
http://www.homethinking.com/269163-Susan-G-McKay-Keller-Williams-Realty-Intown.html
It’s followed link in the “Sponsored” section. I’m tired of this at this point. This is a paid link and they have more.
For the record, we know that these types of links are supposed to be nofollowed so the question is; do we report them as paid links through webmaster tools?
May 17, 2008 — 1:45 pm
Mike Farmer says:
Yes, that will be a tough call for Google. Thanks, I’m beginning to understand this much better — a lot of things are becoming clear.
The “no agent required” made me think about the mindset behind the decision to include that. No language is included will-nilly, and the language was meant to highlight the attributes — so it would have to be a mindset that represents a company philosophy, which seems to be — Agents are not needed — It is desirable to be at a site with no agent involvement — Agents are not necessary — these are all subtle messages to tap into a consumer base that is attracted to a “no agent required” site. That’s fine, if that’s their idea of the attributes of using their site — but it has the opposite effect on agents. It’s offensive. So I ask myself, are agents required in order to have listings to look at to start with? Yes, unless they go all FISBO.
Agents = listings
But what we have here is a site that has received the listings from agents, then advertises — “no agents required”
It’s doesn’t take a mensa to see a contradiction.
May 17, 2008 — 2:28 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@Mike–What they (and frankly everybody) are trying to do is bait people with “No Agents” and yet give them the eye candy that they want (read:listings).
When I saw your post today (was pointed to it by a friend), I thought…if I treated my “partners” that way, I would kind of expect them to leave.
I am sure some will say, “just marketing”…but where I live, words mean things.
May 17, 2008 — 2:43 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
What’s interesting Trulia’s “No agent required”
language does not appear if you do a search directly from Trulia.com
For example go to Trulia and type in the search box “Phoenix AZ”
You get a list of listings
The Url for that is:
http://www.trulia.com/AZ/Phoenix/
NOW go to Google (or Yahoo) and type in “Phoenix homes for sale” (you’ll find Trulia on the first page)
You get the same list of listings as above BUT you will be treated to a header that has the “No Agent Required language”
And the URL for that is:
http://www.trulia.com/AZ/Phoenix/
The same URL as when you search directly on Trulia BUT with the special “No Agent Required language specially for Google users.
No Agent Required
Any one get the irony.
NAR-No agent required 🙂
May 17, 2008 — 3:10 pm
Charles says:
Seems that Trulia has a love/hate relationship with agents. Paid links are running rampant, especially since Google is seeming to hand out penalties willy nilly. Some sites seem immune no matter what they do and others that even touch the grey line get blasted. But I digress. The fact that a webhosting company took it upon themselves to insert content into clients websites without their permission is unthinkable. If it were me, I would be changing my webhosting company immediately. To me, its no different from a hacker defacing a site. What if they decide next to add links to Homegain? Zillow? Redfin?
May 17, 2008 — 3:21 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
Guys;
Rather than piling on Google, Trulia or especially Number 1 Expert…I think it is MORE effective to talk about solutions. I have suggested one…namely OPT IN instead of OPT OUT widgets.
I have intended this blog post as constructive, not destructive. Notice that I did NOT suggest that anyone leave them. I really want to keep the tone of this positive. Please help me keep it that way.
Thanks for your understanding.
Eric
May 17, 2008 — 3:35 pm
Mike Farmer says:
The real estate industry has been asleep at the wheel.
These site deserve all the scrutiny we can give them — they don’t exist without agent support, so we should be able to demand changes — yet, most agents don’t have a clue, and the big companies have some long term strategy going so they won’t act on it (or worse, they are cluless, too).
May 17, 2008 — 3:36 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Eric I agree. However if Number one Agent had asked their agents if they wanted to put the trulia widgets on their sites and apprised them of the benefits and potential risks, how many would have taken them up on it? Probably very few. It would, however, have been the “transparent” right thing to do.
There are plenty of potential conflicts that perhaps greater disclosure between the parties would help. For example:
Trulia and their listing “partners” – I believe that what Trulia is attempting to do now in explaining how they attract Google traffic should have been disclosed up front. I would not be against them applying the no follow tags to the listings, as long as the agents and brokers sending them listings were aware of what they are doing and chose to send them listings because they see the benefit, even in light of the no follow tags, of sending them.
Number one agent and their agent customers.
If the agent web sites were free, I suppose Number one agent could add anything they want to them. However, if the agent is paying number one agent, they should be made aware how their site, the one they pay number one agent for, might be impacted by the officious addition of the trulia widget. Was this just discovered or did number one agent tell their agents about the widgets?
In any event, I don’t think the practices in and of themselves are wrong or evil as some think, but rather that these types of practices require better up front disclosure.
May 17, 2008 — 3:53 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
Of the agents that I have talked to NONE were aware of the Trulia widgets even being there. Some, after asking about them and pointed to some of the original posts, were asked to wait for a few days ‘until the smoke cleared’.
The only smoke of which I am aware is coming from # 1 Expert.
I really do want them to consider what I have said though about OPT IN.
FTR- Opt In does not mean–we are gonna do this to your site. That is just OPT OUT with a skirt on it. It means, if you want it YOU take action to initiate it by calling us.
THAT is OPT in. But that is a little different than just better disclosure.
Want to be clear that what happened here was that REALTORS got widgets added to there site in an inconspicuous place and they had NO IDEA they were even there.
May 17, 2008 — 4:04 pm
Artur says:
How do I check my website for unwanted widgets (http://www.cimpler.com)? I tried to stay away from it but it becomes more and more troublesome.
May 17, 2008 — 5:35 pm
Linda Slocum says:
Much as I’m not a Number1Expert fan, I wonder if they really knew what a mess they were creating when they agreed to insert the Trulia widgets on everyone’s websites. They have done major blunders in the past with these “partner” programs, and it seemed like they were acting based on limited information rather than acting maliciously.
Their prior actions created all sorts of MLS violations, where they were linking to “partners” who stripped their feed of the listing agents’ info. They ultimately corrected this after it was pointed out, but they did not make the effort to make sure all feeds were in compliance with MLS rules before distributing them.
May 17, 2008 — 5:40 pm
Eric Bramlett says:
Artur –
I just checked your site, and you’re fine. No trulia widgets there.
May 17, 2008 — 5:46 pm
Louis Cammarosano says:
Linda
I agree with you. I don’t think that either Trulia or number one expert acted maliciously.
Indeed, Peter Flynt admitted the no follow tags is a practice that they have always followed.
An omission in disclosure, or oversight doesn’t make it malicious.
The advantage of bloggers paying attention means nothing stays hidden and everything is transparent eventually.
The disadvantage is that malicious motives may be inappropriately ascribed.
Zillow for example clearly states that they make money from selling ads, not realtor services.
http://www.zillow.com/corp/HowZillowMakesMoney.htm
It should come as no surprise to any one, nor should we ascribe any malicious motive if any action they take doesn’t square directly with Realtor’s best interests.
May 17, 2008 — 5:53 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@Linda- Very well could be. I am not really much into worrying about WHY they did it. I am merely seeing WHAT they did and its effect. If this was just a mistake on their part then the RIGHT thing to do is correct it quickly.
They may also want to have a professional SEO look at their sites and templates from that or maybe listen to the ones that they have, if any. I am not interested in intent, but I can tell you that these tactics will get noticed when they have the effects that they did.
In other words, Number1Expert, if that’s the case… here’s your escape hatch…just say “Ooopps! We did not know and take them down,” Then allow anyone who call’s in and asks for them to be put up at no additional charge.
That would be the right thing to do…as I stated in my post.
Good point Linda IMO…thanks
May 18, 2008 — 3:42 am
Bob Wilson says:
#1E hired Bruce Clay a few years back after they had problems relating to what Linda mentioned. What they did what was stupid, not malicious.
Eric, why haven’t you called out other website providers for doing things that violated search engine guidelines?
May 18, 2008 — 6:58 am
Mike Farmer says:
Who do you have in mind, Bob? I’m just wondering becuase I’m trying to get a good handle on all this as I make marketing decisions.
It might be time for standards to be set relating to partnership between Listing Sites and agents. It appears to me that whichever company takes the lead on this, and is serious about mutually beneficial partnerships, will be ahead of the game and others will play catch up. It seems to me that agent support of a Listing Site would be a good thing. As competition goes forward, the Listing Site that appears to be most agent-friendly would likely end up with the most listings to show.
Trulia might beat the others in SE placement, but if another site beat them on gathering more listings through agent support, then the site with more listings and support will win the battle — Traffic to a site is useless if there’s not much to look at.
Eric is looking for answers, and to me the answer is to feed the best partner and starve the ones who won’t partner fairly. They should be competing for our listings so that the market place determines the best business partnerships.
May 18, 2008 — 8:07 am
louis cammarosano says:
mike
hands down that site SHOULD be the NAR sponsored site REALTOR.COM
May 18, 2008 — 8:36 am
Bob says:
Sorry Mike, but I don’t believe Eric is looking for answers because of a commitment to transparency, full disclosure, or protecting agents from unscrupulous SEO tactics. I take issue with the sub-title of this post – “Why Put Your Clients at Risk?” and addressing it to a website vendor, when you won’t call them all out Eric.
When another vendor sold SEO services to their clients and it consisted of links disguised as phony blog posts, you stayed silent. When they were penalized, you stayed silent. If you are going to publicly hold one vendor accountable and accuse them of subjecting their clients to risks they were not aware of and urge their clients to take action, then call them all out and urge their agents who suffered SE penalties for services they paid for, to ask for their money back. If this crusade has any integrity, challenge them all, not just those that are not your friends.
May 18, 2008 — 3:02 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@Bob-
a) I started writing at the Bloodhound Blog months AFTER that (penalty) had already happened.
b) I have never appointed myself a deputy to “out” anyone. IN fact this is a FIRST for me. I am generally a really mild mannered guy that minds my own business. The main reason for doing so is that one of the agents in my office is a customer and is at risk. That was not the case with Real Estate Webmasters.
c) I also have had people who ask my advice affected by having a large number Number1Expert sites in their area ask me to help get the word out to unsuspecting real estate agents.
d) Yes, I have a friend. His name is Morgan Carey at Real Estate Webmasters. While I am not his customer and never have been (built my own), but we are friends. Some people like him and some don’t. I have another named Gregg Swann..same applies there. Don’t be expecting me to part company with either one anytime soon. Don’t be expecting me to be disloyal to either one any time soon. Ain’t gonna happen. I stay true to my relationships and friends…but people are funny that way…they seem to trust me…that’s mostly because I stick with them even when things they do are unpopular, or maybe not even good.
Ever been going down the I-10 freeway at more than the speed limit? How come you didn’t whip out your cell phone and call the cops on your friend? Yet if you saw a drunk driver swerving back and forth on the road, would you hesitate for a second? I will admit that I don’t assign the same risk to some SEO practices that you do. I just don’t. That doesn’t make me misguided..I just don’t share your assessment of things.
With that Bob, let’s not make this about your vendetta about another website vendor that you don’t like. Let’s keep it in the subject that is not old news and is the issue today. (That’s what I asked for earlier. I hope you can respect that.)
If the worst thing that you can come up with is “Why aren’t you the whistleblower on everyone?”, then I guess I am not so bad.
Sorry about disappointing you Bob, but I did not have the microphone then that I do now and the facts of the case were totally different. And no, I never claimed to be perfect. Sorry.
It’s funny in your comment to one of my previous post you said “Your beef is with Number1Expert.” I agreed and then I write this post and now you are offended? I don’t get it. Do you think what they did was right?
Another thought– if you see something out there that someone is doing that is so all fired bad, feel free to fire up a blog and shout about it.
REW is not the subject of this blog, #1Expert is. I think it best to deal with the subject at hand and not try to change the subject.
Thanks.
Eric
May 18, 2008 — 4:39 pm
Bob says:
Eric – I didn’t mention names. The shoe fits at least three web site vendors. Accusing me of having a vendetta is an ad hominem argument on your part.
When Trulia scraped my listings, I spoke to them and within a week, they stopped scraping listings in San Diego.
When the website host I used got their clients torched in Google, I said something.
Maybe you don’t speak up normally, but you did here, and you did so by calling into question the ethics and integrity of two companies and two individuals. If Trulia wasn’t doing well in the SERPS, you wouldn’t have jumped on this bandwagan.
Understood Eric. You are protecting your agents who are facing competition that they can’t beat on their own. You now have a bully pulpit and you are calling out two companies.
Your headline accused them of putting their clients at risk unknowingly, while others that have done this don’t get the benefit of you “getting the word out”.
What started out as a complaint about no follows (don’t give them your listings if you don’t like how they are being used) and subsequently a warning about widget links, has now become a full fledged witch hunt against specific competitors – not an industry-wide consumer protection alert.
May 18, 2008 — 5:11 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
“When another vendor sold SEO services to their clients and it consisted of links disguised as phony blog posts, you stayed silent.”
Please name for me the other two. Not an ad hominem attack on my part. You attacked my integrity (if this crusade has an ounce of integrity…)and that of Eric Bramlett and Galen Ward and other who did the resarch. That would be an ad hominem attack.
“If Trulia wasn’t doing well in the SERPS, you wouldn’t have jumped on this bandwagan.”
Ummm…that’s precisely why Galen posted and then Bramlett and then myself…because Trulia was and is going after the SERPS AGRESSIVELY. (Not a crime–so are we all) But the tactics being used were and are in my opinion putting #1Expert website owners unknowingly at risk. (you correctly pointed out that that is #1E’s fault and not Trulia’s, realizing that I posted this post.) Not sure where you were going with that, but oh well.
“Your headline accused them of putting their clients at risk unknowingly, while others that have done this don’t get the benefit of you “getting the word out”.”
So if I haven’t taken the opportunity to out EVERYONE that I possibly could have, then I cannot oppose anybody, at any time? So since you didn’t “out” #1E then that means you have no standing to criticize REW? Not following that logic…
If they (#1Expert) does what I suggest in the post, it will help ALL of them avoid risk. Why is using OPT IN’s instead of OPT OUTs controversial? I was actually trying to be proactive and help everyone all at once.
“What started out as a complaint about no follows (don’t give them your listings if you don’t like how they are being used) and subsequently a warning about widget links, has now become a full fledged witch hunt against specific competitors – not an industry-wide consumer protection alert.”
Actually, no.. none of this would have come to the surface if not for Galen’s post…as several folks looked at it, more issues came to the surface. That’s how news breaks. One piece at a time. This latest post is not a witch hunt. I have NOTHING against #1Expert at all. I think their approach to this LOOKS like a paid linking scheme at worst and a way to put your clients at risk at best.
I was suggesting a way that they could do this that would not be a risk to their clients and wanted a dialog with them…that is all. Yet eveyone jumps in with agendae and want to make this WW3…
Why exactly do they want these widgets on the bottom of an internal page of their site? Is that valuable enough for them to put their clients at risk–especially if their clients don’t even know that they are there? I don’t think so, do you? (Kind of a yes or no question…)
May 18, 2008 — 5:42 pm
Mike Thoman says:
Of course, everyone with a #1E site is now at MORE risk since Matt Cutts was pinged on this post. If this was a paid link scheme, the site to penalize would be Trulia, but I do not know that these are paid links. I hope agents are not dinged for this, but the Google gods are fickle.
And Eric, this may not be a witch hunt, but it sure seems like one.
May 18, 2008 — 7:15 pm
Bob says:
Give me a break Eric. The Mike Wallace gig was cute, but it wasn’t about creating a dialogue or offering up a solution. It was very much like a 60 Minutes hit piece, though.
I haven’t mentioned any by name. You are the one doing that. The fact is that a handful charge for add on SEO packages, marketing packages, etc. Several have received SE penalties by either Yahoo, Google or both. You didn’t warn the general agent population about those tactics. You stepped into the fray because Trulia started to gain traction and you were worried about your agents’ oxen getting gored.
As for an agenda, you have already stated yours – draw public attention to 3rd party sites beating yours or those of your agents and use the widget links to frame the argument about the evils of 3rd party “interlopers”. I have no problem with that. I wrote a post earlier that Greg nuked that was anti-trulia in nature where I criticized part of Pete’s response about the no follows. But this has gone beyond the PSA and education campaign. If this was truly about holding vendors accountable on behalf of naive agents, then it should be all encompassing. But it’s not.
You have certainly called into question the integrity of Rudy. You asked, he answered. You are basically now calling him a liar.
Those pages have listings on them. it strikes me as the appropriate pages to put them on. I’ll provide my own analysis in a subsequent comment.
May 18, 2008 — 8:51 pm
Bob says:
I go back a bit further in the SE real estate space than most. I built doorway pages on my site for Alta Vista and Excite when those worked. You could make a change to a page, hit refresh, and you could be #1 until the guy behind you did the same thing. When almost every member of every real estate forum said frames didn’t work, I had 100’s of top results for just about every San Diego real estate related term and I did it with a framed site with content that was updated maybe once a year. I sold that and took over my existing site and had it #1 in 3 months. So I know a little something about search engines. I have seen all of the major web site vendors do some very stupid things with regard to search engines. As a result, I’m certainly not a fan of the brain trust at Dominion that now owns 3 of the major agent web site providers.
On the flip side, I have seen Zillow and Trulia try to do some very smart things (aside from illegally scraping listings). They have hired some bright people. Zillow went as far as to hire Vanessa Fox away from Google.
I say that because it is import to the discussion. On one side, Trulia is SEO savvy and potentially evil. On the other side they are SEO savvy and the link buying devil. These possible conclusions based on this post.
The big discovery there was that they missed 25k dynamically generated property pages like this one. It is a property detail page for a $3.4 million dollar home and the Trulia widget maps the property. Pretty cool. The widget doesnt take anyone off site. It DOES have a link to the Trulia main page, one to the /truliamap/ page, and the sinister link back to Trulia’s page for the local community of Carlsbad. Surely these are paid links, right?
What the breaking news analysis didn’t tell you was the value of dynamically generated property listing pages, particularly on #1E. The one I linked to above isn’t indexed as I write this (should change given the link from BHB). I checked over 100 of those pages. NONE were indexed by Google. However, what was fairly common was to see pages like this one – a page that reads “The listing you are requesting is no longer available”. No widget on those pages.
To answer your 3 questions – the 2nd which is phrased like the “are you still beating your wife” type –
1. I think it is pretty obvious why they are on the pages they are on – that is where they should be.
2. I have a hard time believing Matt Cutts or any other spam cop would think those widgets are out of place. They clearly have the potential to add value to the visitor to that page and they pose NO risk at all to the web site owner.
3. If there are 100 pages out of the 25k listed by Yahoo that have any link benefit at all, I would be amazed. No value to Trulia and no risk to the website owner.
If Trulia paid for those links, they are fools. But we already know that can’t be true because the resident SEO experts at BHB have labeled them as being anything but stupid. So maybe, just maybe, Rudy is telling the truth.
As for the 11K /MyHomes.asp/ pages, most of those have minimal juice, but are still effective from a brute force standpoint and are certainly helping Trulia in Google.
The thing is this though. Google isn’t stupid. They have widget spam on their radar. Since they have entered the real estate space with Gbase, it’s a safe bet that they have Trulia, Zillow, et al on the radar as well. If anyone is at risk for those widgets, it’s Trulia.
Go back to educating, but offer a well rounded, objective education. If you want to take on the 3rd party guys, do so, but be honest about it and quit yelling “Fire” on a crowded website.
May 18, 2008 — 10:14 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
“You have certainly called into question the integrity of Rudy. You asked, he answered. You are basically now calling him a liar.”
Why exactly do they want these widgets on the bottom of an internal page of their site? Is that valuable enough for them to put their clients at risk–especially if their clients don’t even know that they are there? I don’t think so, do you? (Kind of a yes or no question…)
Ummm…Bob. The THEY in this case WAS NUMBER 1EXPERT. I have not called Rudy’s integrity into question. YOU made the point that my beef is with them (again, Number 1 Expert).
Please re-read it from that perspective. You will see that this was clearly pointed at them. NOT AT RUDY.
What is plainly obvious to me (and as you pointed out) was the CORRESPONDING rise in the Search Engine Results of Trulia will the appearance of the widgets.
Galen’s original post was that the listings were helping Trulia get dominance of street address searches – Which is true in my opinion. He suqsequently noted that they were gaining traction for the short tail stuff as well.
Bramlett’s post explained a big chunk of that IMO as being aided by the widgets.
Rudy claimed that they are not paid searches. As I said, they LOOK paid (not that they ARE paid, which causes the risk. Again…I would LOVE some dialog on these pages from NUmber 1 Expert and or Trulia, but Number 1 Expert on why they find these widgets so valuable as to COLLECTIVELY tilt the table in Trulia’s favor. So IMPORTANT that they feel the need to drop 11K of them on sites all over the country where their customers are not even aware.
I did not question whether they were APPROPRIATE to be on those pages. I questioned Number 1 Expert as to WHY they would take the effort to use OPT OUT widgets to stick in several links each to a COMPETITOR site.
I think there is a reason that you and I don’t use them on our sites. I mean, they certainly would be appropriate in terms of content, but….do they add THAT much value on the bottom of a single page as to warrant a link from MY site? No. Especially not one to the SPECIFIC page that is competing with me and especially not one that has the Anchor Text ” City Real Estate”.
BTW- Bob, I (for one) am yelling FIRE because there is one. First you said the beef was with Number 1 Expert. Now you say Trulia is at risk.
If Number 1 Expert just made those widgets OPT IN instead of OPT OUT…and (knowingly or not) did not slip their customers widgets that LOOK like paid links and HAVE affected the search engines…this problem would go away for BOTH parties.
That is the suggestion that I am offering here and I am still mystified as to why it is controversial.
Best;
Eric
May 19, 2008 — 3:29 am
Eric Blackwell says:
Edit: Should be, “they are not paid links”
May 19, 2008 — 3:30 am
Bob Wilson says:
Your opt in solution is not controversial. The context and delivery of your message is. You have framed an argument using just the info that you choose to use. The post about the additional 25k links was purely sensational. You and Eric have either deliberately left out the part about the non-value of those links, or you didn’t know.
>not at Rudy
Spare me. The theme of this post is a phantom interview with #1E AND Trulia where you pose the question and they don’t answer. Rudy and Pete have answered you, but that isn’t good enough for you.
>look like paid links
I could make the same argument with the article links some of you like. They look exactly like pre-sell pages.
The Trulia maps are placed on pages with listings. That is the point of the widget. The majority of those pages have absolutely NO SE value for Trulia, but because you take issue with the placement of the map, and the fact that they have links in them (which all widgets do) you deem them to look like paid links.
You are correct that I don’t use Trulia’s map because of the links in the code. I could, but I won’t neuter them because that is the fair use agreement for using the widget. If Trulia changes their wording that grants me permission to do so, then they’ll go up.
Yes, it is #1E’s decision on what they use. Trulia can’t be blamed because #1E has a stupid opt out policy. Because the widgets serve the user, they pose no risk to a #1E web site. The risk is to Trulia if Google decides that they break any guidelines. More likely, it speeds up the demise of the value of widget links.
I’ll leave this discussion at this point. You made your points and I’ve made mine. There is enough info out there now for people to make intelligent decisions without reacting out of fear.
May 19, 2008 — 8:15 am