{"id":3059,"date":"2008-05-05T19:17:42","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T02:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2008-05-05T19:58:46","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T02:58:46","slug":"the-realtybot-shuffle-truliacoms-response-to-complaints-about-nofollow-tags-on-partner-supplied-content-seems-truly-atrocious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3059\/the-realtybot-shuffle-truliacoms-response-to-complaints-about-nofollow-tags-on-partner-supplied-content-seems-truly-atrocious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Realty.bot shuffle: Trulia.com’s response to complaints about nofollow tags on partner-supplied content seems truly atrocious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Galen Ward’s post on Trulia.com’s policy of adding “nofollow” tags to links back to its own listings partners<\/a> has elicited quite a bit of controversy.<\/p>\n

The original post itself excited a great deal of commentary, and this is explored in encyclopedic detail in a fascinating post by Union Street Media’s Gahlord Dewald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trulia.com’s Rudy Bachraty participated for a while in that comment thread, then elected to take the respondent’s side of the debate back to Trulia’s home weblog, where head honcho Pete Flint made an effort to put out the fire.<\/a> Comments there have been noticeably light, which made me wonder if Trulia has learned ahead of the curve why video commenting is a stoopid idea.<\/p>\n

The story was picked up by Inman News today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I am in the perhaps unique position of being just barely smart enough to explain what’s going on within what might well seem to others to be a blizzard of jargon.<\/p>\n

Start here: I observed that Trulia is achieving truly amazing long-tail search results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Galen pointed out that an ancillary reason for this is that Trulia is not allowing search engines to “follow” its links to its listing partners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other words, you — or your broker or your brokerage chain — feed Trulia.com a real estate listing, the primary content it uses to sell advertising. That listing will link back to its source (in hierarchical order: brokerage chain, broker, then lowly you if neither of the others is coming between you and your listing). But that link will include a “nofollow” tag, which means that when search engines see that listing page on Trulia, they will not<\/em> queue your own page for spidering, nor will they in any other way regard that link as lending any strength to your page.<\/p>\n

In still other words, Trulia is happy to feast on your crackers, but it’s not about to share any of its Google juice with you.<\/p>\n

Trulia’s claims about why it is not doing this are specious and bogus, in my opinion, but you can read their side of the story at their weblog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Does this actually matter? I think so, for two reasons. First, the Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Galen Ward’s post on Trulia.com’s policy of adding “nofollow” tags to links back to its own listings partners has elicited quite a bit of controversy. The original post itself excited a great deal of commentary, and this is explored in encyclopedic detail in a fascinating post by Union Street Media’s Gahlord Dewald. Trulia.com’s Rudy Bachraty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-disintermediation","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-technology","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1409,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1409\/podcast-interview-with-truliacoms-heather-fernandez-real-estate-professionals-are-going-to-be-able-connect-directly-with-consumers\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":0},"title":"Podcast interview with Trulia.com’s Heather Fernandez: “Real estate professionals are going to be able connect directly with consumers”","author":"Brian Brady","date":"May 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Linked below is a podcast interview I conducted with Heather Mirjahangir Fernandez, Trulia.com's Director of Marketing. Heather takes us through all of Trulia's new functionality. At the end of the recording, I raise the idea that Heather might be getting a lot of email about the upgrade, so it seems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3040,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3040\/oh-canada-your-zestimates-are-baking-zillowca-is-in-the-oven\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":1},"title":"Oh, Canada! Your Zestimates are baking: Zillow.ca is in the oven","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"So: My belief would be that, regardless of Trulia.com's nofollow policy on the listings it solicits from Realtors, brokers and brokerage chains, if you're building things right at home, you should be able to beat any out-of-town infiltrators on your own listings. So I looked up \"718 West Moreland Street\",\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1488\/trulian-overdue-improvement-zillowcom-makes-home-qa-searchable-by-location\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":2},"title":"Trulian overdue improvement: Zillow.com makes Home Q&A searchable by location","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From the Zillow Blog:One request we received over and over again (including impassioned pleas from our own president, Lloyd Frink) was to let people see a list of Home Q&A in their city or ZIP code. Agents and other real estate professionals want to see what questions are being asked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":142,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/142\/color-me-stupid-but\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":3},"title":"Color me stupid, but . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"...I don't get it. The Future of Real Estate Marketing avers that Trulia.com's release of its map interface is a shudder-inducing disaster for other developers. This on the heels of yesterday's reporting on Zillow.com's release of its API to individual brokerages. There's more news on both announcements at RealtyThoughts. Is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3412,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3412\/bearing-the-sacred-mantle-of-insolence-in-the-parliament-of-whores-win-a-free-set-of-bloodhoundblog-unchained-dvds-in-the-just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you-realtor-scam-of-the-week-contest\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":4},"title":"Bearing the sacred mantle of insolence in the Parliament of Whores: Win one of two free sets of BloodhoundBlog Unchained DVDs in “The just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you Realtor-scam of the week” contest!","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Q: What's the difference between cows and Realtors? A: When they get the urge to be milked, cows don't fly to trade shows at their own expense, wandering from booth to booth with their udders out.Well. I certainly feel vindicated. The RSSPieces clusterfrolic is further proof of the advice I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1629,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1629\/the-iphone-is-excellent-but-its-missing-features-give-laptop-computers-a-reprieve-for-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":3059,"position":5},"title":"The iPhone is excellent, but its missing features give laptop computers a reprieve — for now","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"That's an enlarged image from BloodhoundBlog on the iPhone. Cathy and I spent about an hour yesterday at the Apple Store at the Fashion Show Mall toying with demo units. We're rarely early-adopters, so we have no exigent plans to switch, but the phone is a lot of fun to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}