The title pretty much sums it up. They’ve pulled down the cloaked 301’s that we identified last week. So…they’ve either gone white hat with it, or they’ve gone deeper to an IP cloak (which is very difficult to identify.)
There’s always something to howl about.
The title pretty much sums it up. They’ve pulled down the cloaked 301’s that we identified last week. So…they’ve either gone white hat with it, or they’ve gone deeper to an IP cloak (which is very difficult to identify.)
Hunter Jackson says:
leave it to trulia.
July 3, 2008 — 9:02 am
Greg Swann says:
> leave it to trulia.
Leave it to The Army of Davids. They didn’t go blacker-hat — not with all this scrutiny. Now they need to revise the nofollow policy on links from listing partners. The best reason to do the right thing is to know that you are doing the right thing. But doing the right thing is good for business, no matter how your impulses might incline you. What Trulia needs more than anything is for Eric Bramlett to be interested in something else.
July 3, 2008 — 9:20 am
Eric Bramlett says:
🙂 lol…I’m not obsessively hell bent on outing Trulia’s questionable SEO strategies. The UA cloak was actually anonymously emailed to me. Their strategies are just so obvious, and seem pretty contemptuous of the Realtor community. I just enjoy explaining what’s going on.
July 3, 2008 — 9:38 am
jay says:
I’ll be emailing my remax listserv in the area regarding several of these Trulia issues soon. I plan on using pieces of many bloodhound posts and links to several authors on the subject. I’ll be communicating to my colleagues that they need to think 2x who they sleep with and if necessary to wear protection based on what we’ve learned from the trulia tests as of late 🙂 And I’ll be asking them to consider what are the long term consequences of these “relationships”.
Too many contracts to work on for now though….
July 3, 2008 — 10:02 am
Thomas Johnson says:
I have kicked the Trulia no follow policy upstairs to the Realogy website team. Hopefully they will re-evaluate the wisdom of feeding 1/3 of the US listings to Trulia with no SEO benefit for the brands: ERA,C21,Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s.
July 3, 2008 — 10:27 am
Eric Blackwell says:
@TJ- Nicely done. Hopefully they will. I have a HUGE problem with FRANCHISES who don’t OWN the listings syndicating them as well. Not their call IMO
@Jay- I wrote an article published in the RE/MAX Times Online about Trulia widgets as well. Way to go.
@Bramlett- As you said…this was anonymously emailed to you..there are now HUNDREDS of pairs of educated eyes watching…but a more discretely done cloak would not have been seen at all…Thanks for the update!
July 3, 2008 — 10:51 am
Heather Rankin says:
TJ – Thank you. For a new ERA Realtor, the news that Trulia is feasting on the listings was somewhat discouraging. My thought is that T can only stay ‘no follow’ for so long before some of the big boys at Realogy nix it or fix it.
@Eric – I quickly removed the T widgets from my blog once I read posts here and at BlueRoof 360.
There is simply no way for a newbie to catch these tactics without the help of those higher up the learning chain. Thanks!
July 3, 2008 — 3:36 pm
James Boyer says:
Thanks for bringing this out in the open Eric,
@Heather, don’t be surprised if it takes Realogy a really long time to figure all of this out on their own. Think years!!
Trulia is likely putting a few $$$ in the pockets of execs pockets from companies like Realogy and Keller Williams, who practically force their agents to give their listings to Trulia.
July 3, 2008 — 6:45 pm
Hunter Jackson says:
I spoke to 9 agents about this in my office today, none had ever heard of trulia. I am scared
July 3, 2008 — 9:06 pm
John Sabia says:
@TJ- I have sent this to higher ups and CB with not too much success. I just don’t think they get it or as Boyer pointed out, they have probably been bought off.
They have fooled themselves into thinking more exposure for listings outweighs everything else.
Companies like CB, KW, Re/Max & Sotheby’s, etc, will understand quickly if enough agents take a stand and force them to reevaluate their partnership with Trulia.
Perhaps an online petition will get their attention.
Agents are the backbone of any real estate office.
Hopefully, with enough education out there and the continued discussions on Trulia Awareness more and more agents will understand the long-term threat and decide to take this stance.
July 4, 2008 — 11:12 am
Carolyn Gjerde-Tu says:
I agree that at a brokerage level the top priority seems to just get listings exposed, not really to drive traffic back to the brokerage. Good to see trulia doing the right thing on these links, still not time to stop the trulia awareness though.
July 5, 2008 — 9:04 am
Bill Gassett says:
The thing about this is that most broker/owners don’t know enough about SEO to begin with. I think if more people in the upper ranks of some of the big franchises knew about this kind of thing it would get addressed.
September 2, 2008 — 1:41 pm