There’s always something to howl about.

Trulia Widgets — a deeper look

Why would Eric Bramlett post something like this? Or this? The debate rolls on as to Trulia Widgets and their use as a linkbaiting scheme. They are writing these things because they matter. But it has been said that they don’t matter, that Trulia would still be climbing in the search engines **cough**Google**cough** anyway. So I have undertaken to research a bit more deeply. (Authors Note: In ALL of what I say here, please understand that (on an SEO level), I ADMIRE what Trulia has pulled off here. They have found the soft underbelly and have used it to their advantage. Props to you.)

Here is a very brief overview of my findings: (NOTE: I have more which will continue to come out as time goes on…)

Let’s look at the city of Nashville. And at the term Nashville real estate. Trulia has recently popped up onto the first page (#7 in my datacenter). How did they get there?

The page on Trulia’s site that is #7 on Google is trulia(.)com/TN/nashville/. If you look at Yahoo Site Explorer, you can see that there are 3,800 plus links to Trulia (but all links are not created equal). There are only 108 of those links that are coming to Trulia from outside of Trulia.com. Let’s take a look at two of those links, shall we?

On MOST Trulia widgets there are often three links back to Trulia. Here’s an example. Here’s another. Scroll down on each page to see the Trulia Widgets and find the links. Where do they go? What ANCHOR TEXT do they use?

Typically one links goes to the local site (to compete against the very REALTOR whose site it is on, another link goes to Trulia’s home page and a third goes to their widget page. Hmmm…and if we look at the bottom of the latter two of those pages, where is Trulia pointing all of THAT link love from ALL OVER THE COUNTRY?

nashville2.png

It appears that Trulia is pretty interested in San Fran, San Jose, Phoenix, San Diego..etc etc…Those are some fairly competitive areas, so they funnel some extra strength there from widgets all over the country. Jay Thompson and Kris Berg–my friends, are you hearing me on this? Both of you have Truliamazing widgets on your sites last I checked…and you guys are getting TARGETED in my opinion…fair warning.

Notice that one of those sites cited above were the Number One Expert sites that Bramlett mentioned? Is it becoming clearer that having these widgets on your site helps Trulia outrank you? IT SHOULD BE! In my opinion Number One experts should be asking their website company why they are facilitating the rise of Trulia and what the PURPOSE of that was and is. At the VERY LEAST they could no follow the links and return the favor, but no…they insist on giving search engine positioning away.

And check out example #2! You folks at Trulia want to tell me that this one is for ANYTHING more than pure links? There is ZERO aesthetic purpose for this one that I can see. Here’s a quick screen shot.
nashville.png

Find THAT one on the front page of allisonhometeam.com. Yep it is all the way down at the bottom, where no one goes anyway. And it is on the home page of their site…

OK, you say that is all great, Eric. But how does that prove that the widgets are helping them rise?? Well…I actually looked at quite a few cities where Trulia was on page 2 or three of the search engines. Low and behold those were the cities where the bloggers and real estate sites had (by and large) resisted the urge to put the Trulia widgets up. (surprise, surprise.). Truliamazing.
More on that coming soon.

Let’s start by calling on Number One Expert to start taking theirs down or no following them. And let’s start INFORMING REALTORS of the true cost of the widgets and other links to Trulia. If REALTORS understand the cost and decide to do it anyway, I am cool with that. I just don’t want them to do it just because they were / are uninformed.