Quote from Rudy Bachraty on REBarCamp Denver’s announcement that he will be speaking there: (my emphasis added)
“Trulia is a real estate search engine and online community where you can find homes for sale and detailed local real estate information.”
This is the second time in recent days that I have seen Trulia refer to itself as a search engine. In my opinion that is no accident. So time for me to offer some clarity.
Ummm…OK…calling yourself a search engine is a nice little attempt to muddy the water in our little blissfully ignorant vertical and blur the differences between a scraper (which your site started as–more references available upon request), a third party listing aggregator, and a search engine. There are huge differences between them. Google is not a scraper. They are a search engine. They index data that resides on other peoples servers. You, on the other hand, pull the listing data onto your own site for the purposes of monetizing it.
Let’s see, how can I explain this the easiest way…perhaps a video:
You see, Trulia? I know search engines.
Search engines are a friend of mine…
and Trulia?…
You’re no search engine.
Joe says:
Ok, well then, our website is a ‘search engine’ for Tri Cities Washington properties. So there! [grins]
May 22, 2009 — 8:03 am
John Rowles says:
Um, doesn’t your search bar have to accept keywords to be a search engine, like this (shamless plug for our technology) perhaps?
Boston MA Back Bay Condo parking included
May 22, 2009 — 9:21 am
Benjamin Ficker says:
Not a huge fan of Trulia (other then trulia voices) but is calling them a scrapper accurate? If they were given a feed from the MLS or broker or whatever, I don’t see that the same as anonymously stealing data from sites to make money. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but having permission is different then stealing,
May 22, 2009 — 12:29 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
Hi Benjamin-
I was very careful to choose words with what I wrote. Words (like the words “search engine”) mean things. Yes, Trulia did start as a scraper site.
Are they today? I dunno. Publicly they only put listings up when people voluntarily list with them. That would make them a TPA (third party lead aggregator. Yet several months ago, I found hundreds of our brokerage’s listings up on Trulia (and we do not syndicate except for a couple of our 110 agents.). So I sent the pertinent info to our Board and had them call Trulia. (That makes me lean towards scraper.) But when our board insisted that they take those listings off of their site, they called it a glitch and removed them promptly. (So I guess that leans them back to Third Party listing aggregator?)
That is why I put three categories out there. Scraper, Aggregator, and Search Engine. They are one of the first two. Did they start as a scraper early on? Yes.
Are they today? Dunno. Who cares. That wasn’t the point.
My main point is, they are NOT a search engine. (which is what they have started to call themselves…)
May 22, 2009 — 1:38 pm
Paula Henry says:
Seems like Trulia changes the definition of their prupose as the industry news changes. I say they may want to reconsider – because come November, if the current rule we are fighting does not change, Trulia then becomes a scraper – again!
May 22, 2009 — 5:30 pm
Benjamin Ficker says:
Thanks for the clarification Eric. I guess what a company tells you publicly isn’t always the case, lol.
May 22, 2009 — 7:38 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
How can Trulia be a scraper if they bought the listing data from the MLS? A tangled web NAR weaves..
May 22, 2009 — 7:43 pm
James Boyer says:
Trulia, not much different then Housevalues.com or justlisted.com 3 peas in a pod.
May 22, 2009 — 7:45 pm
Laurie Manny says:
Awhile back one of my listings on Trulia was showing a photo of the building down the block. Contacted Trulia and asked them to fix it, it was embarrassing. Rudy told me they had no control over the photo, it was on a feed, that the only thing they could do was to remove the photo, which they did.
Lo and behold, the next day I find my listing on Redfin, with the SAME wrong photo. A polite email to Redfin, the photo was corrected and I received an email of apology.
But what I learned from this experience is that Trulia is most likely tapping into the feed that Redfin is supplying to supplement the listings that they do not get.
Think about this for a moment. Redfin is a licensed broker publishing the MLS with license. Trulia is not.
But they keep getting away with it.
I say follow the money!
May 22, 2009 — 8:21 pm
Eric Blackwell says:
@T Johnson – ummm….where did you see anything about them buying data from an MLS? A scraper is one who takes data from someone’s site and puts in on their own. It was not sold.
By having our Board call them, I was simply excercising the due diligence and protection that is expected of brokers. We are expected to protect the data from scraping.
Best
Eric
May 22, 2009 — 8:23 pm
John says:
Scraper, 3rd party aggregator but definitely not search engine. Please!!!
May 25, 2009 — 8:49 pm