There’s always something to howl about.

Mike Wallace interviews Number1Expert and Trulia?

Things have been busy around here lately. This controversy over Trulia’s widget baiting tactics rages on in the internet world. Now Sherry Chris has chimed in as well. (Kudos to you for entering the arena…others should follow). Bottomline is this: Trulia calls us partners. (REALTORS and them) Before someone calls ME partner, there is a fair amount of due diligence needed.

Right now there are FAR more questions than answers. The research that has been going on has been productive, but what we NEED is honesty and transparency. It is what everybody wants from US, now why don’t we get that same transparency from the people raising so much hell about it.

The facts on the table seem very disturbing.

Perhaps Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes could help us get to the bottom of the issue?

This is totally hypothetical, but it would go something like this…

MW: Welcome gentlemen. There has been quite a controversy lately, Trulia, about your aggressive SEO practices.

Trulia:

MW: It seems that according to some bloggers and some search engine marketing professionals out there that you have pulled off quite a feat. You have managed to get tens of thousands of REALTORS to voluntarily ALL use your widgets all at once? How did you do it?

Trulia:

MW: That is how it happened, right? I mean your tools were SO cool that many people just decided that they HAD to use them and put them on their blogs and websites, right?

Trulia:

MW: From the research that a few of these folks have done MANY of these widgets appear at exactly the same place on the same exact pages over and over again on THOUSANDS of Number1Expert Sites all across the country…is that because each of these folks decided to put them there?

Trulia & Number1Expert:

MW: It seems pretty hard to believe that this was not done by Number1Expert… are we to beleive that? How did this come about? Since (according to reports) you have 2 and 3 links on EVERY one of the widgets pointed back to Trulia, it would seem that this is a great benefit to you. In fact, it has been reported that numerically, over 22% of the links in your portfolio come from Number1Expert. Do you have another explanation? Have you talked with the folks at Number1Expert?

Trulia:

MW: Number1Expert, your parent company is Dominion Homes Media, right? Do they not also own Advanced Access, another major real estate website player? So your company has experience in working with REALTOR websites, correct? On your website you state that you have 2,489 websites coast to coast, is that number accurate? If it is, then how do you explain all of the links? Are they coming from inactive websites as well? Is that a possible explanation? Are there other ones?

Number1Expert:

MW: Was this POSSIBLY a deal between the two of your companies? Did money change hands? Were agents made aware of these widgets being on their sites? Or were they put on their by the web developer? If so, WHY? How can a responsible web developer do this to his / her clients?

Number1Expert & Trulia:

MW: And just for clarity’s sake, many of these widgets APPEAR TO BE posted on the bottom of the “featured listings” pages, well below all the other IDX data about the homes themselves. I mean, it was not like you didn’t have the data, N1E? Why did you do that, N1E? Was that to make it easier on your staff? Was it because you thought that it would not hurt your own stated objectives to get these REALTORS the BEST search engine positioning possible? Because it was EASY?

Number1Expert:

MW: Finally, with all of this controversy out in the open, why not just drop these links? I mean they really are not helping you anyway, right? You are the REALTOR’s partner right? Or maybe there is more to this?

Ok, time to cut in on Mike Wallace a little bit…

There is no doubt that there are FAR more questions that answers. One thing is for sure: When one dog barks, the rest of the pack shows up. Galen yelped first. The response from Trulia was far less than satisfactory. So a few more of the pack used some of our research talents. Low and behold we MAY have sniffed something out…only time will tell. The sound of howling is now echoing in the corridors of real estate. Hopefully we will get answers to these questions and more.

Ah the joys of an Army of Davids, none afraid to pick up 5 smooth stones…

Mike Wallace sure has a lot of questions. When will these questions get answered? I guess that is what the comment section is for…