About a month ago, Zillow started showing the number of contributions you have made to their data base in your profile. Up at the top you see the total number of contributions, and down below you get a running total of recent contributions.
It was obvious where they were headed, a de facto ranking system based on user contributions. In the co-branding information released earlier this week, Zillow made mention of “badges,” and one of the pix they released showed a badge in the co-branding area.
But… I didn’t actually dare to think that I would qualify as a Zillow All Star…
There’s a point at which it’s kind of funny — does it come with a secret decoder ring? But even so, I don’t hate the idea. Active Rain built something that might someday be a business on a completely brain-dead points system. There is no way to make a brain-dead contribution to Zillow. Everything matters.
And thrusting everything associated with the sale of real estate to the side, I love the idea of Zillow becoming fully-populated with data. There may come a day when the Zillow data base is the de facto museum of residential real estate. Hundreds of biz school PhD theses could emerge from that vast store of information.
In the mean time, your Zillow All Star badge is another co-branding trinket you can put on your weblog.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology, Zillow.com
Michelle DeRepentigny says:
Nice to know somebody still loves me! I really didn’t expect to have one – I do post my listings but rarely have questions in our area nor do I participate on the forum often. Hmmm…now I’ll probably get more active, just so I can keep mine. Talk about a great carrot on a stick.
July 11, 2008 — 8:22 pm
Michelle DeRepentigny says:
After hitting post I just realized, they are giving points, lol AND the points are actually good for something.
July 11, 2008 — 8:24 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
Zillow All Star!
The only time I will rank with Greg Swan in anything! Wow. It just goes to show how a little work ZESTIFARMING can go a long way!
July 11, 2008 — 10:25 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
We were notified by email yesterday that we received an all star badge … but it is nowhere to be found on our profile today. Sic transit gloria mundi.
July 12, 2008 — 4:23 am
Mike Farmer says:
How come I don’t have an All Star badge? Whassup wid dat?
July 12, 2008 — 5:02 am
David G from Zillow.com says:
🙂 A new by-product of Zestifarming!
All-star badges recognize the most influential users currently active on the site. Contribution count is a simple count but here we do have a bit of a black-box and we may tweak it as we go. We don’t intend to stack rank all-stars – it’s a binary thing. You know how they always mention that in about online communities, 90% of the (best) content is contributed by X% of visitors (where X is some small number, usually less than 10%.) All-stars are that X% on Zillow.com. Just a simple way to thank you for posting your listings, photo’s, comments, loan quotes and profiles on Zillow.
July 12, 2008 — 7:53 am
Eileen Pettengill says:
Will you all have a secret handshake now??
July 12, 2008 — 7:53 am
David G from Zillow.com says:
Eileen –
ROFL. No badge, huh?
July 12, 2008 — 8:26 am
Ken in Chicago says:
Badges are great….for Zillow. One of the oldest SEO link baiting tricks in the book is to create a badge and make it appear to have “value”. People like to look important so they put them up on their websites and you gain tons of links.
July 12, 2008 — 8:43 am
David G from Zillow.com says:
Ken – you don’t have to have the badge on your site to receive all-star recognition.
On the SEO angle here … if you’re using your Zillow profile to its fullest, linking to it using a badge should be far more valuable for your sites’ SEO than ours. That’s ’cause you can post an unlimited number of (followed) links in your profile on Zillow and linking to it obviously ensures that those links get indexed. If the link from your badge is co-branded, your site is getting free advertising, branding and SEO.
Click through to Greg’s profile via this co-branded link to see what I mean;
http://www.zillow.com/profile/BloodhoundRealty.com?scrnnm=BloodhoundRealty.com
July 12, 2008 — 9:14 am
Greg Swann says:
Echoing David, the Zillow user profile is an amazingly generous space if you are looking for an opportunity to sell yourself to Zillow visitors. I wrote about that much here. We talk all the time about Zestifarming techniques, work you can do on Zillow to draw eyes back to your profile. These new co-branding features are also very generous. It’s share-cropping, and it doesn’t pay to think of it any other way, but Zillow is paying much better shares of the crop than any other Social Media Marketing entity. Nothing prevents you from going it alone — and I think you would be ill-advised not to maintain your own unique presence on the web. But if you are throwing your lot in with Zillow already, very small efforts — doing a great profile, fleshing out your listings, linking to Zillow with the co-brand code — seem to me to leverage very well.
July 12, 2008 — 9:24 am
Mike Farmer says:
How many contributions do you have to have?
July 12, 2008 — 10:50 am
Mike Farmer says:
Dang, I’ve been cut from the all-star team, and I’m having such a good year.
July 12, 2008 — 2:54 pm
Ken Smith says:
David “… if you’re using your Zillow profile to its fullest, linking to it using a badge should be far more valuable for your sites’ SEO than ours.”
I understand it’s your job to sell Zillow, but seriously how deep do you need to shovel it.
You want me and other to believe that by linking to Zillow that we are getting more out of the deal then Zillow is? This is highly inaccurate. A bunch of links fromone site will not change your rankings. It takes links from lots of sites to grow your rankings. Otherwise an agent could just go out and build a boatload of links from one site and be #1. Doesn’t happen.
On the flip side Zillow is getting lots of links from different real estate sites. These links in total have far more effect on increasing the rankings of Zillow then value of increased rankings it passes to real estate agents.
In case that isn’t clear:
If 10,000 sites all link to Site A and site A links to all 10,000 sites who comes out on top? Very simple answer, Zillow.
As a side note all 10,000 sites gained nothing compared to each other. They all have the exact same reciprocal links as each other so zero net gain. Only way to have gained would be to get links from Zillow without sending any to it.
If your SEO people don’t realize this then they all need to be fired. And Zillow happens to just be lucky they are ranking where they are, but I seriously doubt that so please don’t lie in attempt to improve your company image.
July 12, 2008 — 2:57 pm
Eric Bramlett says:
David, I like you, but that’s an absurd statement.
July 12, 2008 — 3:32 pm
David G from Zillow.com says:
Ken –
I’m not lying and I don’t disagree with you. Yes, in the aggregate, Zillow benefits greatly from multiple links from multiple sites. Nothing to hide there and Zillow’s API program and the site’s products and content, in general, have always attracted both branding and inbound links from multiple sites, just like Zillow’s brand has always had significant reach in mass media. And for all of our content distribution partnerships, from yahoo! to profile badges, we’re certainly very grateful. Most of our site’s traffic comes from people typing “Zillow” into their browser or google but we’re also focused on growing SEO traffic from non-Zillow keywords. Good SEO is simply good business online. What we are learning from the API and widget and co-branding programs is simple; create value for your users and they’ll reward you for it. I recommend a similar strategy for any online marketer; it works.
What I was saying is that for any webmaster or blogger, linking to their Zillow profile offers (at least) quid pro quo w.r.t. free advertising, branding and SEO benefits IF you take advantage of the features offered to you. Namely;
– You should be co-branding any links you may have to Zillow. When you do, you get branding and a link back to your site on every page visited from that link.
– You should linking from your Zillow profile to your sites and blogs. Those links are followed and many Zillow profile pages have great page rank. Even if you don’t link to your profile, it may well be indexed – no strings attached there, it’s good SEO to take advantage of profiles on Zillow and so does …
– posting your listings on Zillow, because links to listing sites are also followed! And your profile also links to your listings; yet another good reason to link to your Zillow profile. Or not.
July 12, 2008 — 4:17 pm
David G from Zillow.com says:
Mike –
It has more to do with the number of *recent* contributions. I posted this on Zillowblog earlier:
So how do you become a Zillow All-Star? Well, we’ll be tweaking the formula as we go but simply, All-Stars are the most active users on Zillow. They are the folks posting the most discussions, photos, listings, loan quotes, etc. New badges are awarded daily and to retain Zillow All-Stars status, you will need to remain active on Zillow.
July 12, 2008 — 5:08 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@ David G- I appreciate your clarification, because Ken’s point IMO was spot on.
In general in the real estate industry, it is my assessment that the third party folks are turning this into a link aggregation derby. (And you know I like you, but I have to be honest about what I see.)
I have NO debate that your offer may well be more generous than the other third party folks are offering currently. And in all fairness, I have not checked out the details. But in principle, the aggregated link strength of thousands of REALTORS linking to Z! can be used to get rank for a third party site on an individual city or cities of their choice. Whether I am one of those cities or not, I don’t feel like donating. No offense intended whatsoever. Just trying to be intellectually consistent with my past positions on things.
July 12, 2008 — 5:44 pm
Eric Bramlett says:
Again, it all boils down to competition. Zillow, Trulia, & Homegain are all competing with us for buyers and sellers. The only difference between our local comp & the national guys is that our local comp takes the deal to close while the other guys want to sell as the lead(s) at fruition.
There’s NOTHING wrong with their business model(s.) However, I’m not going to help them take my business in order to sell it back to me.
July 12, 2008 — 5:52 pm
Mike Farmer says:
Thanks for the clarification. I guess I won’t be an all-star. I have gone back and forth on this issue, but i think I agree with the Erics. I am going to take a final stand on this and remove all links, especially since my profile has not produced any referrals from any of the listing sites, even when I made 680 something contributions to Zillow. That’s a lot of contributions for nothing in return.
July 13, 2008 — 5:46 am
Ken Smith says:
@ Mike with 680 contributions I would expect multiple closed transactions. That is a LOT of work for nothing in return. The sad truth is that I have heard this over and over from very active contributors at Zillow, Trulia, and Active Rain. Yet they hear a story about one lone closing some agent got from their efforts and they hang onto the hope of future transactions.
Reality is that the hours spent building up these competitor websites would be MUCH better invested in building your own web presence. Even better it would be spent directly prospecting and generating now business.
@ David if you agree then don’t attempt to cover up the truth. If what you said isn’t a direct lie it is at best a clear attempt to manipulate the truth. Again I understand that you are an employee of Zillow and it’s your job to do this, but expect to get called out when it happens.
Fact is Zillow is nothing without agents supporting it with content and links. All the media in the world wouldn’t help Zillow if agents would just stop giving away links and content for little to nothing in return.
“Good SEO is simply good business online.” – This is very correct and exactly why agents shouldn’t link to their competition. Thanks for making my point.
July 13, 2008 — 12:10 pm
David G from Zillow.com says:
Ken –
Nope, wrong. The fact is that 4 million people a month were regularly visiting Zillow.com long before a single listing or link was contributed to the site. Zillow audience was reportedly the most affluent of any website online (with > 3M visitors) long before we gave listing agents free access to that audience. Fact. Remember that Zestimates are Zillow’s proprietary content and Zillow is not another listings arbitrage play.
If you read Greg’s comments you should note that he echoed the points I made w.r.t. the SEO benefits of partnering with Zillow. Greg is certainly not lying and does not share my bias. As I’ve said, it’s no secret that Zillow benefits when professionals use Zillow – that’s pretty much how the new media works – but regardless of my bias, I’m convinced that the benefit to RE professionals of participating in Zillow is at least quid pro quo.
Mike –
I respect that you should put in your effort where you see the most reward. Zillow Discussions don’t work equally well for all agents and lenders though some swear by it. Thanks for giving it a try! We are working on significant improvements to the community features that should serve local experts better and so my hope is that in the future you’ll find good reason to contribute to Zillow again!
When it comes to online marketing I personally prefer not to have all my eggs in one basket. When we launched Zillow, for example, we relied very heavily on PR as our primary marketing strategy. Later, we discovered that if we also focus on social media and SEO that we could increase the reach of our marketing effort (including the efficiency of PR, still our primary channel.) SEO works; it’s simply only part of the online marketing picture. And if, like many SEO’s, you believe that link-building should be part of your SEO effort then you may be looking into how to benefit from opportunities like those offered by your profile on Zillow anyway.
July 13, 2008 — 4:56 pm
Mike Farmer says:
“I personally prefer not to have all my eggs in one basket.”
A more apt analogy would be not planting all my seeds in one lot, but planting them in many fertile lots.
July 13, 2008 — 6:47 pm
Ken Smith says:
Zestimates…now that is a fun topic isn’t it. It’s kind of like a carnival side show where they guess your age. As long as it’s within 5 years +/- they don’t owe you a prize, it they are incorrect they give you a cheap prize. The only difference is when you are incorrect you give the consumer absolutely nothing for your repeated inaccuracy.
The side show and a great PR team generated traffic in the beginning. This would not have lasted past the honeymoon phase as the one trick pony and PR team could only go so far and last so long. So you correctly moved to allowing agents to contribute listings and content. The public now expects more of Zillow then your carny sideshow you would be very hard pressed to last without the agents that now support it.
But lets not get sidetracked as this has nothing to do with your original claim that I took issue with you directly about:
“if you’re using your Zillow profile to its fullest, linking to it using a badge should be far more valuable for your sites’ SEO than ours.”
Or the original issue I addressed:
“One of the oldest SEO link baiting tricks in the book is to create a badge and make it appear to have “value”.”
Both of those statements are highly accurate and agents need to know that linking to Zillow just helps Zillow rank better and end up becoming stronger online competition for high value keywords.
No different then Trulia, their SEO team just happened to have a better strategy (or at least a better executed strategy) for acquiring links from agents then your SEO team so they are ahead in the game. But seriously people do you want Trulia, Zillow, and Yahoo real estate as the top 3 results for every major real estate term? If not stop linking to these sites and stop providing them with free content.
Agents efforts would be MUCH better spent building up an asset they own.
July 13, 2008 — 9:27 pm
Paul Francis says:
@David G from Z:
“long before we gave listing agents free access to that audience.”
Do I have to keep pointing out that you need the listings to give visitors a reason to come back? I would really have to wonder about somebody if they just kept typing in Zillow to get a zestimate every day…
July 25, 2008 — 12:09 am
James Boyer says:
David G from Zillow. “When it comes to online marketing I personally prefer not to have all my eggs in one basket.” I also prefer not to have all my eggs in one basket, but when it comes to the internet and baskets to put your eggs in, there sure are way more baskets and 3rd party sites out there wanting REALTOR eggs. When it comes right down to it, does the public really need or get much value out of third party sites like Zillow, Trulia, and … That is debatable. I have been a Real Estate Buyer in a market I had no access to the MLS in, and can tell you I was able to find more highly relevant information than I needed without the big 3rd party sites such as yours, so I tend to think that the general public can as well. Not saying Zillow Trulia… don’t have a right to exist, but I do often say that they get in the way of the true Real Estate professionals giving people the real information to those who need it.
July 31, 2008 — 10:32 am
Michael Sosnowski says:
I am late to this thread, but just wanted to add the opinion of a realtor in a smaller market – Maine. I have always viewed zillow, trulia, realtor.com and others of this ilk to be my online competition. Realtors who support them – by providing listings, writing blogs, etc simply don’t understand that it is us against them for online presence. Its just that simple! No amount of sweet talk from David G can change that.
November 27, 2008 — 9:21 am