{"id":3187,"date":"2008-05-29T07:11:51","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T14:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3187"},"modified":"2008-05-29T07:13:06","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T14:13:06","slug":"agent-branding-is-good-but-truliacom-is-still-deliberately-hi-jacking-street-addresses-frustrating-the-interests-of-sellers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3187\/agent-branding-is-good-but-truliacom-is-still-deliberately-hi-jacking-street-addresses-frustrating-the-interests-of-sellers\/","title":{"rendered":"Agent branding is good, but Trulia.com is still deliberately hi-jacking street addresses, frustrating the interests of sellers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still digging out from Unchained, so this is not as timely as it might have been.<\/p>\n

First, I think we might have gotten distracted by whatever cozy arrangement does or does not exist between Trulia.com and Number 1 Agent.<\/p>\n

Second, I think Trulia’s recent announcement that agents can “brand” their own listings is a move in the right direction<\/a>. Trulia has always seemed to me to play favorites with the White Shoe set, and giving the grunts on the ground a chance to compete with their bosses for their own business is… damned near decent.<\/p>\n

But: I am not prepared to yield on the main issue. When Trulia.com puts a “nofollow” on the link back to my single-property web site for my listing, it is depriving my sellers of the natural dominance they should have in Google over their own<\/em> street address.<\/p>\n

The issue is one of canonicity. If Truila were giving my URL an ordinary HTML anchor link, then Google would know that my site is canonical and Trulia’s is derivative — which is undeniably the truth.<\/p>\n

By putting the “nofollow” tag on what is in fact a JavaScript link, Trulia is falsely implying that it<\/em> is the canonical resource for information about that property.<\/p>\n

That much is a lie, but it gets worse: If someone Googles the street address for my property and finds my single-property web site, my sellers — through me — have an uncontested opportunity to sell their home to that potential buyer.<\/p>\n

If instead that potential buyer finds Trulia’s link to that home, the buyer is thrust into a vast supermarket of real estate, and the sellers are deprived of their opportunity to sell their home and their home only.<\/p>\n

This is not a dual agency issue here, this is simply a matter of giving sellers the best advantage they can possibly have from searches on their own street address<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Because Google would regard a normal link as leading to a more canonical resource — regardless of differences in Page Rank — by putting a “nofollow” tag on its links to agent- and broker-supplied real estate listings, Trulia.com is deliberately hi-jacking the street Read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still digging out from Unchained, so this is not as timely as it might have been. First, I think we might have gotten distracted by whatever cozy arrangement does or does not exist between Trulia.com and Number 1 Agent. Second, I think Trulia’s recent announcement that agents can “brand” their own listings is a […]<\/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-3187","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":3059,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3059\/the-realtybot-shuffle-truliacoms-response-to-complaints-about-nofollow-tags-on-partner-supplied-content-seems-truly-atrocious\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":0},"title":"The Realty.bot shuffle: Trulia.com’s response to complaints about nofollow tags on partner-supplied content seems truly atrocious","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"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\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":1408,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1408\/is-truliacom-the-unzillow-realtybot-emerges-from-beta-with-a-new-qa-feature-and-robust-system-wide-automated-alerts\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":1},"title":"Is Trulia.com the UnZillow? Realty.bot emerges from beta with a new Q&A feature and robust, system-wide automated alerts","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Come with me to the newly-reconfigured Trulia.com, freshly emerged from beta status. Let's search for an ideal house. The criteria we can use are limited -- location, type of structure, price range, bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage -- but we can still scare up some results. Plus which, if you really\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":4163,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4163\/with-its-new-iphone-application-truliacom-is-taking-on-line-real-estate-search-to-the-streets\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":2},"title":"With its new iPhone application, Trulia.com is taking on-line real estate search to the streets","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). There is a fuller review of this new technology here. \u00a0With its new iPhone application, Trulia.com is taking on-line real estate search to the streets So who is winning the Realty.bot race, Trulia.com or Zillow.com? Your guess\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":1199,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1199\/realtybots-will-make-sellers-happy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":3},"title":"Realty.bots will make sellers happy","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me in today's Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0Realty.bots will make sellers happy We talked last week about the move by Realogy Inc. to supply millions of real estate listings from its national brokerage chains to upstart Realty.bots Google Base and Trulia.com. This puts the Realty.bots on the map.\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":3122,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3122\/truliatrackingphp-keeping-track-of-the-truliacom-nofollow-controversy-with-a-widget-for-the-rest-of-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":4},"title":"TruliaTracking.php: Keeping track of the Trulia.com nofollow controversy with a widget for the rest of us","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Using Eric Bramlett's green ribbon and a little bit of PHP, I have built a small widget to keep track of the accumulating body of weblog posts on Trulia.com policy of adding the \"nofollow\" tag to links back to its listing partners. Shown below is an image of the widget;\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":1410,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1410\/truliacom-versus-zillowcom-revisited-are-your-end-users-temporary-or-permanent\/","url_meta":{"origin":3187,"position":5},"title":"Trulia.com versus Zillow.com revisited: Are your end-users temporary or permanent?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me last month, at the time of the Zillow.com's most-recent software release:In the world of Trulia.com -- and other listings.bots focused on evanescent listings -- users come and go. On the idealized Planet Zillow, users come and stay. Home buying is at most an 18-month effort undertaken every\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187","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=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}