Trulia Helps Agents Put their Stamp on their Listings
Up until now Trulia had very little in the way to offer agents to market their listings on the site.
Sure, they could offer up their expertise inside of Trulia Voices - but I suspect most consumers coming to the site are less interested in engaging in an online conversation with a Realtor than they are in getting to the heart of the search experience. That is, finding the homes for sale.
Until now, agents were cut out of that action on Trulia. Brokers could brand their listings and choose to feature certain listings in specific searches, but in an industry where most agents are independent contractors and responsible for their own marketing budgets, this setup was always slightly discordant. With the release of Agent Featured Lisitings, this imbalance has been righted and agents can put themselves directly into the heat of it all.
More from Trulia Blog.
Agents will have access to a self-service tool to highlight up to 10 listings per month for a monthly subscription fee of $50. For less than the price of a typical newspaper classified ad, agents can now highlight their listings and connect directly to more than 2 million unique users per month.
This is a natural evolution for Trulia’s marketing platform. Realtor.com and other sites have offered this capability for yonks. Unfortunately, the product feels disappointingly limited in the first release (agents can add a photo and contact information and that’s it) but Trulia promises greater functionality in future versions. Ultimately, agents may be able to change the link to their own websites (or blogs) - which is a very interesting option… obvious SEO advantages notwithstanding.
(As an aside, I wonder how this feature would jive with brokers that pay for branding and placement of their listings and their agents could potentially redirect that traffic outside of their corporate sites and away from their e-teams.)
What’s increasingly clear is that Trulia’s broker-based model and Zillow’s agent-centric model have become virtually indistinguishable these days, as their product offerings align themselves more and more closely with each other (see And They’re Off… It’s Search versus Community).
Just like EZ Ads on Zillow, Trulia’s Agent Featured Listings will certainly compliment the savvy real estate professional’s marketing arsenal. The price is right and in this day and age, any edge is welcome.
For more on the launch, and since I’m Phoenix today, I thought I’d link to two Arizona-based blogs for more on Trulia’s new product. Check ‘em out.
- New self-promo play at Trulia.com: Like Realtor.com, but cheaper - BloodhoundBlog
- Trulia Expands Offering to Agents - Dalton’s Arizona Homes Blog
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Incredible Agent | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
Why do agents need to pay just to tell a consumer they are the listing agent? Agents are the ones giving them the listing for free in the first place. Now Trulia wants agents to pay in order to put their photo on their own listing? I like the folks over at Trulia, but that’s seems more than a little wrong. I don’t know how this will end up, but I predict some backlash on this.
retrove.com | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
It’s interesting and caters to the need for most agents self promotion but as Damon from IA indicated…
“agents need to pay just to tell a consumer they are the listing agent? Agents are the ones giving them the listing for free in the first place”
This has always been an issue at realtor.com and the agents. The real benefit is that it may make it a little easier to contact the agent directly.
Regarding this… “obvious SEO advantages notwithstanding.” probably not 100% accurate. Across most of the site, T uses a redirect script and the rel=”nofollow” - so no benefit from true SEO just SEM and maybe additional visitors.
Catering to the agents self publicity needs is a simple / quick way to increase revenue that agents are already comfortable with but in the long run it maybe met with the same issues as the big R.com
Desmond | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
This will only work if it is free.
David G from Zillow.com | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
Indistinguishable?
There is absolutely no cost for agents to associate with their listings and promote them on Zillow. It would seem that that’s the opposite of what’s being announced here.
Hardly indistinguishable!
Joel Burslem | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
@Retrove - Nice catch on the rel=nofollow. I kind of suspected that to be the case, but didn’t have a chance to dig deep into it since I was banging out this post on the road.
retrove.com | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
No worries. Just want to make sure agents pay the $ with the thought of getting some kind of “seo” value that is not really there.
Keep up the great writing!
Hawaii Life | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
I don’t think this only works if it’s free. Do you pay to have an ad for your listing in a magazine? Why wouldn’t you pay to advertise your property if it gets additional exposure? Agents want everything for free. Well marketing costs money. If you market your listing properly, it will sell faster.
Joel Burslem | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
@David - Trulia got broker feeds. Zillow’s going after broker feeds. Zillow offers self service ad platform. Trulia offers self service ad platform. Trulia offers a place for Realtors to share expertise. Zillow offers a place for Realtors to share expertise. Trulia offers heat maps. Zillow offers heat maps. Need I go on?
Galen | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
Ouch - they nofollow those links? That’s pretty shady - nofollow is supposed to be used when you’re linking to a bad or unknown neighborhood on the web, not one of your “valued partners.”
Galen | Nov 8, 2007 | Reply
Joel, they’re definitely not indistinguishable. One is far more sensitive to online criticism.
Cape Number Plates | Nov 9, 2007 | Reply
@retrove - now strictly true either. Small amounts of link juice are still passed through nofollow. Nofollow links still show up in the google webmaster console and several highly regarded SEO marketers have pushed this belief. I agree (although I could be completely wrong LMAO).
David G from Zillow.com | Nov 9, 2007 | Reply
Joel -
From a Realtor (and broker’s) perspective, I’m assuming that there’s a distinction between free and “for fee.” From a user’s perspective, IMO it would be pretty cool to see Trulia make use of the Zillow API (obviously without the nofollows.)
Galen -
ROFL
retrove.com | Nov 9, 2007 | Reply
@Cape - I agree that G knows of the link but no matter what the benefit is not the same as a “standard” [a href="http://www.domain.com" rel="nofollow"] link.
But my comment indicated that they use a redirect script “and” nofollow to be sure there was no value passed. This allows them to control and disperse PR and protect themselves from linking out to possible individual sites who have used questionable linking practices.
If you look at the link structure used by T to link out to all of the sites providing listings, it’s a redirect page called transfer.php?
As a test, there is a featured listing on T in San Francisco (255 berry street # 508 ) that points to a stand alone property domain - http://www.255berry508.com - a link: command on both G & Y do not reflect any incoming links from T. Analyzing the session - the link returns a temp 302 with a URL that does not contain the actual URL of the target site: /transfer.php?s_id=10387707&feat=1&p_id=1042211768&t_id=frpt2
Additionally, the T robots.txt tells G “disallow” indexing the /transfer.php so it has nothing to pass from the temp 302. The nofollow is just additional protection.
That being the case how does the site at the other end receive any “real” SEO value at all expect the actual site visitor, which is a SEM / branding benefit. Mind you, I understand why they do this… as it allows them to track everything using this link structure and provide advertisers with great tracking reports. So it’s not that what is done is bad, it’s simply that it’s important the agents / brokers understand that there is no SEO value from it and that should not be part of the decision process in deciding whether to advertise or not. In my opinion any exposure of the listing will help the consumer, so even if nothing is passed it is still worth it for the agents to do so on behalf of their clients.
Metrowest MA Homes Blog | Nov 9, 2007 | Reply
Retrove - Interesting discussion of the no follow/link juice. Is there an easy piece of technology that spots whether a site is no follow or not? I assume you have a way that tells you very easily given your knowledge of the site?
retrove.com | Nov 9, 2007 | Reply
@Metrowest - Sure. All you need to do go to the page in question in your browser, right click on your mouse (unless its a mac) and do a “view source”. Review the html code looking for the link structure.
@David G - nice one regarding the nofollows. Yes, the big Z gives full link juice… now can you do agents a little favor use the actual domain name or other more meaningful text instead of “See additional Web site”
Dan Nappi | Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
Metrowest, Yes if you use firefox browser download a plugin called search status here is the link it allows you to highlight the no follow links.
http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Leawood Real Estate | Apr 15, 2008 | Reply
I think it is most important for the future success of Trulia to have agents contact information attached to their own listings. I am a Pru agent and even with the Pru & T partnership, my lsitings still don’t give me credit as being the listing agent. I agree with the comment above about this being a similar issue to what Realtor dot com has faced.
If R.com would have got their business plan right from the get go, no one would have been able take their market share. They have all the listings and NAR behind them from the get go and still have a hard time fending off competition. As an example…Even Mom & Pop retail stores would dominate Walmart if they had that kind of competative advantage in their business.
I am not saying I want R.com to own R.E. 2.0 but that is a great example of a bad business plan for Trulia to learn from.
The problem with Realtor dot com was that never once was the site about providing the consumer with information about homes, it has always been about trying to find a way to generate the most amount of profit from Real Estate Agents. By making that it’s number one priority, it has made its content (all its listings) lack the basic information the consumer wants to see to keep them on the site and/or coming back to the site.
All sites are there to profit…that is understandable, but Realtor dot com loses the interest of the consumer by having some homes with ample information and most homes with next to no information (because they want agents to pay to have their contact information attached and their listings to have more information and photos on them). Trulia at least wants as much listing information as possible but dont forget about the people who are giving you that information.
See additional web site | Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
“…it has always been about trying to find a way to generate the most amount of profit from Real Estate Agents”.
I couldn’t agree more and it’s been ridiculous.