Trulia Widgets. Are they stealing your Google juice?

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Trulia Widgets. Are they stealing your Google juice?

Hi folks. I'm writing this post to send you guys over to Eric Bramlet's post over at http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/ titled Trulia Widgets: Truliamazing Trojan Horse(s) . Now folks.....I am far from being a techie and most of this stuff is over my head BUT from what I'm reading it looks like all these cute little Trulia widgets are swiping our Google Juice.

If you are wondering why Trulia is beating you out, for local Google SERP, this could be why. From what I understand, every time you place one of their widgets on your web site or blog you are basically telling Google that Trulia, not you, is the local real estate expert.

Did you know when you Google Poinciana real estate, Homes.com is number 1 and Trulia is number 2. My site, http://buypoinciana.com is number 3 and 4. My site http://poincianaproperties.com is number 7 and http://brokerbryant.com is number 10.

Fortunately, for me, I do own 40% of the SERP for that search. But why should I have to compete with Trulia and Homes.com? They are NOT experts on Poinciana real estate. In fact, you can't even find me when you click over to their sites and I belong to both Trulia and Homes.com. Actually, after extensive searching, you can find me. But that's only because I know where to look. The consumer doesn't have a chance in hell, of finding me, unless it's by luck. OR.....they can Google Poinciana Real Estate Expert and find me in the numbers 1 and 2 position! Bite me Trulia!! Oops....sorry....I couldn't resist.

My http://poincianaproperties.com site is hosted by Homes.com and has been for almost 9 years. I wonder why my profile and listings, when found directly through homes.com, is loaded with paid advertising? Seems like the $79 a month I have been paying for 9 years would keep that from happening.

My suggestion is to pop over and read Eric's post and then take the steps he has outlined to change the Trulia widget code. Or better yet....quit using ALL widgets. Have you ever looked to see how much crap widgets place on your computer? It's a whole bunch. Widgets are like spy ware. Not only are they stealing your Google juice but they are also spying on you!

Do you really think they give you these FREE widgets just because they are nice and want to help you? I don't believe that for one minute. Those FREE widgets are costing you. They are costing you business.

OK, that's it for me. You got anything to add?

***VISIT THE DIRECT SOURCE FOR POINCIANA REAL ESTATE BELOW***

Bryant Tutas
Broker/Owner
Tutas Towne Realty, Inc
Licensed Florida Real Estate Broker
http://www.brokerbryant.com/
***The content of this blog is solely my opinion***

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Posted by Bryant Tutas Broker/REALTOR(R) Tutas Towne Realty, Inc on 05/07/2008 11:22 PM

Comments (140)

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140 Comments on Trulia Widgets. Are they stealing your Google juice?

MAY

2008

Reserved Parking For "The Lovely Wife"...TLW...ROAR!

Blog Boy...

How many times do I have to tell people nothing is REALLY FREE??

Sorry to holler...But gosh...Trojans and FREE go hand in hand.

P.S. I'll try not to mention that this Trulia thing pisses me off :)

TLW...ROAR!

Bryant - Personally, I hate widgets. I can take a shower & choke down a cigarette before being able to log onto some people's blogs because of how long it takes for their blogs to load. My guess as to why.....Widgets! Ok, now on to check out Eric's post...

We are always hearing about adding this and that to our sites. It just gets to be too much. Less is often more.

Bryant, I checked out your site. FYI:The green was bright. Anyway, thank you for letting us know this little Trulia secret. I need to make sure I do not have any of those widgets. I wonder if I could come up with a widget that can give me everyone else's Google juice?

Thanks for blogging about this over here. We really need to get the word out about linking to Trulia. Any time you post a Trulia widget, or any time you link to Trulia, you're telling Google that Trulia is the authority, and you're hurting yourself in the search engines.

Bryant,

Thanks for pointing this out....I got rid of most of my widgets quite a few months back.

Off to read Eric's post...

Eric, Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully this will send you some good traffic. I'm not a techie but I'm guessing all these links to our sites, in this post, is a very good thing.

Jimmy, Thank Eric for the Trulia info. I'm just feeding off of his post to give it more exposure. By the way my sites are all blue. What's the green? Am I missing something?

Karen, I have always been a fan of less is more. Unless of course we are talking money.

Jason, I remember a while back when Brad Andersohn crashed his blog he had so many widgets!!!

TLW, Are you yelling at folks? I guess they best listen then!!!

BB,

Nothing is really free..only AR. I keep waking up from having bad dreams...the dreams of paying AR..hopefully that will never happen.

I don't know if it will do any good trying to spread the word about the evils of Trulia, Homesdotcom and Realtordotcom. Your average Realtor is not very tech savvy in the first place and there is only space for ten of us on the top of each google results page. Your average Realtor (not us web nerds) may actually do better with these evil mega companies than trying to get their own sites to rank.

Bryant;

Great post and well said. Thanks for keeping it in the public eye! Nicely done

Eric

Good job- keep up the good work educating all the real estate agents.

Hmm, very very interesting. I'm happy I don't use any of their widgets.

I don't understand the Trulia widget craze... why would you want to send your hard-earned leads to another website, especially one that doesn't retain your contact info?

When I click through on a Trulia widget listing in Los Angeles, CA, it shows me "Robert and Katrina" as the listing agents, but my info is nowhere to be found. I'm sure these are nice people, but if I send a buyer to them, I want to do it knowingly and with a referral agreement in place.

Use your IDX instead - it's not a freebie, but it does have the ability to capture prospect contact info. This is why you have a website anyways, isn't it?

I was wondering how those sites get top ranking on so many key words, and I never thought about widgets being part of their strategy. Thank you for providing me with my "Ahhh" moment of the day. Luckily(?) I'm not that far evolved, so I hadn't experienced widget mania yet.

Great post Bryant. I guess its a good thing I never started with the widgets. Trulia certainly seems to be a very hot topic these days.

Good points Eric and Linda. Trulia is out to help Trulia. Every time you visit that site, add CONTENT to it by filling out Trulia answers, you are giving them credence as a real estate resource. Make no mistake, they are in business to make money and will do so by capturing customer leads that could have found YOUR site instead. As Brian points out, they are listed as an expert in his area which they aren't? Why? Because lots of agents spend time on their site giving them free original content and links which google really likes.

So get rid of your links to Trulia from your websites and blogs or you'll be competing with them (and losing) pretty soon if they aren't already. -Charles

I've been telling folks this for years, but, HEY! who listens to me?

Every time one of these jokers calls me and wants to sell me something, they always start off with "we can blah, blah for you".

I keep telling them that all I want them to do is "Get out of my way".

No widgets for gadgets or other stuff for me. Just good old fashioned SEO is all I need. I'm everywhere. From time to time, for some searches, one of my sites will even come up above Trulia or Homes.com.

But, not often enough.

Thanks for the heads up Bryant and Eric. Anyone using Trulia's widgets should certainly remove them from their site ASAP!

They need us to provide them the listing data, and then they want us to link to them so they can rank well in Google... all so they can sell you a featured advertising spot on their site. Without your data and links they have nothing to sell!

Broker Bryant, Laurie Manny gave me such a warning a long time ago. WOW. Do you suggest I take off my sidebar listing widgget by Vflyer?

Bryant - more and more I think it's important to focus on local market share with your website. I'm curious - do you get more traffic to BrokerBryant.com or poincianaproperties.com ?

BB:

Great post! Jason knocked off all my widgets a few weeks ago because of concerns like this.

He also hasn't done the blog customizer for me because the project wasn't originally sanctioned by Active Rain. It was more or less just done. After it was launched...what could AR do? Say, "NO!" to their members and look like the bad guy? I think not.

This is just all my thoughts and opinions BTW. Nothing has been said to me about it...just what I think and why I won't be doing it.

I have always been leery about widgets...now I know why. Funny though, when you search my area they aren't near the top of the results. It's beyond me too:)

Ignorance is Trulia blissful. Don't know how to load a widget, code a widget, starve a widget, nurse a widget, chase a widget ... I guess I'm good.

Unless Trulia secretly owns one of the widgets I have embedded, then I'm not doing them any favors. But that is really shady if that's what they're up to!

Yep, Trulia is not giving away stuff for free, it might look like it, but far from it.

I do not like these widgets anyway - I have only one, I think (LOL) and that is just a line up of my 5 most recent posts or something.

They are annoying, slow down page load, etc. I don't go much for widgets.

It would be nice to hear some fair & balanced rebuttal from the folks at Trulia before we go on a widget witch hunt...just my $.02 worth

BB,

Great post!

I use widgetbox.com which helps with our G-Juice.

No complaints as of yet with placement,but will monitor more than before!

Broker Bryant very interesting....maybe I should have checked with the computer scientist.. I have trulia on my website..I have to pop over to the other post! Thanks :)

BB, Thanks for explaining this to the people like me, not technical. I have a couple of widgets, maybe I will fire them? I just thought they dressed the page up a bit? I don't have anything from Trulia. Gonna go and clean up my act.

BB,

Thanks for the post...I couldn't agree with you more. Nothing is free.

Hi BB - I've read a number of posts this past week about the widgets, especially those from Trulia. And Trulia people have chimed in on some of those blogs I read this week. Their widgets do exactly as you've said they do, and some of those posts, and Eric's may have been one of them, have proven this to be true.

Regarding your Homes.com site - you should be able to go into your admin panel and turn all those ads off if you don't want them on there.

The customizing of blogs here that many have done has nothing to do with widgets, especially the kind written about in this post. I haven't seen any widgets being used in either the backgrounds or the headers, so not sure why that was mentioned above in a comment.

All of those widgets given for 'free' by companies like Trulia aren't given away out of the goodness of their hearts.....

Ann

Eric Bramlett is right on top of this and it is true. Trulia wants you to think they love ya'll and they are here to help agents; Don't you believe that for a minute! It is posts like these that Eric has done that we should all be spreading like wildfire to other agents. Great Investigative Work Eric.

Bryant, thanks for pointing out that article. For the agents that don't believe Trulia is not our friend; Google some Trulia keywords and do a little reading from others. It's all over the net if you want to read it and learn.

By the way, Trulia is not the only 3rd party real estate provider out there trying to make money from your hard work, they are just one of the smarter ones.

I have been following the Bloodhound blog for days and completely dis-agree with most of the comments made. I have been in the internet business for many years and know a lot about SEO and website rankings. I am pretty confident that placing Trulia widgets on your site is not going to take away your Google juice or have a negative affect on your site ranking.

Want to know why Trulia outranks most Agent sites?

1. Well constructed and properly optimized pages.

2. Continually changing content and new content added daily and hourly. This makes Google want to come back again and again to index new Trulia pages. This is also why AR and many other blogs do well in search engines.

3. Yes - they have lots of links back

Would you stop using AR because AR ranks well in search engines and above many Agent sites?

How can you as a Realtor do better in search engines?

Properly optimize your pages and continually add new content that relates to the area and listings you service. I don't mean add a new page to your site once a month. I mean add at least 1 to 2 new pages daily and focus those pages around your area or information about your listings.

Get quality, related links back to your site from blogs, online profile pages, social networks, etc.

Setup some live XML feeds on your site so the content continually changes. Not Javascript feeds but true feeds that resolve as HTML content within your pages (website).

That is why I never use those widgets on my website...why send consumers off my site? Also, IMO, they look like junk and clutterful...keep it simple is my motto :)

Most widgets are either Flash based, Javascript based or in iframes. Search engines don't index Flash, Javascript or iframes, which is another reason I am confident that widgets are not taking away your Google juice. Trulia's map widget is in an iframe - see below for Trulia's map widget code.

<iframe style="border:none; padding:0px; width:340px; height:329px;" frameborder="0" width="340" height="329" scrolling="no" src="http://truliamap.trulia.com/truliamapapi/a=5fa9ac&u=fd63b6&sid=12&cv=2&v=map&d=source&lat=37.76&lng=-122.45&s=large&r=15&city=&state=">your browser not compatible</iframe>

So most widgets will have no affect on your "Google Juice".

Thanks for the heads up and I will certainly be looking into these posts.

Misty - What sites do you have ranking in competitive markets?

Rick - when you post here under a real account rather than anonymous, I will be more than happy to provide you samples.

I guess I can create an account later tonight. Will someone with a real account ask for proof of her expertise? lol

Rick or whoever you are - it's not about me not wanting to prove to you my expertise. I just don't like wasting my time responding to posts when the poster is not willing to show who he is. If you took the time to look at my AR profile and the sites our company runs, you would be able to see the results we get in search engines.

Misty, I'd love to know, too. This is a fascinating topic and I am hoping to learn something before I start using widgets and the like. Thanks!

Hey Misty -

Just like I told you at BHB when you accused us of "blaming our poor rankings on Trulia," the bloggers bringing this to light predominantly have high ranking sites in competitive markets. Personally, I'm top 5 for "austin real estate" and #1 for "austin condos."

Now...onto your flawed analysis:

It's not about leaking PR. PR Leak was a hot topic 5 years ago. It doesn't hurt you to link out. It DOES hurt you to link out to a direct competitor (like Trulia.) Trulia is "stealing your Google juice" b/c people are unwittingly helping Trulia outrank them.
You're correct that spiders skip flash, and the Trulia widget is flash. Why don't you take a look at the widget again and tell me about the 2 hard coded links at the bottom of each widget? What's that? HTML? Oh, right - the spiders do read that.

I dont believe that any of these widgets don't have something that helps Trulia.

So round 1 took place at BHB and round 2 has been moved here to AR? Just checking.

Eric - yes - I saw the hyperlink on the bottom of the Trulia widget. A link on a widget back to Trulia is not going to take away rankings from an individual site. Will it help Trulia overall? Yes, it helps Trulia get link backs but this is only a very small part of why Trulia ranks well. I have come across many Agent sites that out rank Trulia for their area and many of the sites that outrank Trulia even have Trulia widgets on them.

I have to agree with Misty. She is one smart cookie. I know alot about SEO and internet marketing especially outside of our little real estate world.

I don't like so many widgets because they slow down loading times for those who have dial up. I do use the important tracking ones like cluster maps and mybloglog stats. I also use the Vflyer widget because we get at least 3 buyer leads a week from that little thingy with my listings scrolling on my blog there!

I would not go for the cutesy stuff, the fluff, that is just distracting.

I have seen some AR blog pages with a higher than normal page rank who use Trulia and have their Trulia profile linking to their AR blog. That seemed to be the only difference in a link to their blog.

I don't like Trulia, homes.com, Zillow- for many other reasons but SEO not being one of them. I have them all beat in my market. Point 2 can not even get above me and that is where my website is! My AR blog even beats out my own point 2 website. It is all about making those google spiders love you and keep coming back to be fed some more.:)

Amanda - see our most recent results from http://www.classifiedflyerads.com/search-engine-exposure.php

We rank on page 1 for thousands of searches. We even link to Trulia and other directories from time to time. We allow others to place links on their profile pages back to their sites, etc. and it hasn't harmed our ranking.

Misty -

It's a very large part of why they rank for local real estate terms. Thousands of on topic links w/ keyword rich anchor text from highly topical websites will tend to make a site rank well.

Replying to your "how to beat Trulia" post. Content added daily, alone, will NOT make you rank. Creating compelling content that others link to WILL help you rank. It's the old, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it make a sound?" You can add thousands of pages of fresh content, and if no one finds it compelling and links to you, it will do nothing. I have friends who have successfully OWNED the serps for years with static sites.

The way to beat Trulia is to make sure that you DON'T link to them, and to make sure that more people DO link to you.

And yes, please, I would like examples of competitive markets that you have managed to rank highly in.

Just saw your response above. Those are about as far from "competitive terms" as you can get. If I titled a blog with any of those terms, it would outrank any of the corresponding pages.

Great points.

Giving a 3rd party group like Trulia links from your sites - feeds a dragon that will ultimately come back and bite you.

Hopefully more people will realize that the Trulia widgets that are "free" - are simply too expensive to use and are costing them a LOT in the long run for search engine visibility.

Gelding the Trulia widgets with nofollows does a LOT to help stop the link juice that Trulia is stealing from everyone.

Guys, google juice never gets stolen. Only when you link to a high percentage of questionable sites, you may become guilty by association. Got it? ;)

Logged out, but you got me thinking. Every time, I've had a widget, it shows up pretty prominently on any Google Search. Makes you want to be more prudent about what little gizmos are attached to sites we work so hard to maintain. Thanks for the heads up...

Hi Bryant, as your better half said "nothing is REALLY FREE"... Nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything has a price, even if it isn't obvious. Why is it so difficult for people to get that concept?

I agree that there is no free lunch.... Trulia is a very smart company. They have to be receiving some benefit for allowing a widget to be used. I myself prefer the less is more route.

Best,

Scott

Hi All!

For clarification, I suggest everyone here reads our blog post first before jumping to conclusions - Search Engines, Trulia and Googlygook.

And, this is what I said previously:

"1. Yes, widgets help Trulia’s SEO
2. Yes, you can add nofollows, but if you are tinkering with the code anyway, it might be easier to just pull the links out
3. We get tons of requests for widgets from agents, so we build them and offer them for free.
No secrets, no Trojan horses, no malicious campaign. By the way…..interested traffic on Trulia is passed to your listings - not your competitor or some other IDX site - helping sellers sell their homes."

In addition, yes, our widget has links to Trulia to show the content attribution. However, many companies that offer widgets include links for content attribution as well. I won't name them but I see them on your sidebars all the time. It's not hard to guess you know.

By the way, the term Trojan Horse is usually associated with viruses, something we clearly do not do.

Overall, we love everyone's feedback! And yes, we've been listening, as we always do.......................

Thank you,

Rudy

Social Media Guru at Trulia.com

P.S. In case you did not hear, we won the 2008 People's Voice Webby Award yesterday :)

And so the reason I don't do bunches of widgets or have a bunch of outgoing stuff to OTHER sites .... it takes away from me...the real estate agent :) As for trojans and viruses ....I don't think that's the correct word for taking away.... we can only give away what we put on to begin with :)

I think I read all this right :)

Good Post Bryant. I got an e-mail yesterday announcing that my local assoc. just partnered with Trulia giving them access to our MLS and listings. I am not happy about it & sent them a complaint with my opinion. But, I seriously don't think it will do any good.

Brian...great post and so much information so soak up! I"m bookmarking this to give it a good once over! Thanks for the info.

"Guys, google juice never gets stolen. Only when you link to a high percentage of questionable sites, you may become guilty by association." Very True - well said

"Replying to your "how to beat Trulia" post. Content added daily, alone, will NOT make you rank." Very True - one thing alone will not make you rank. Just like linking to Trulia from a Trulia widget will not take your rankings away.

"If I titled a blog with any of those terms, it would outrank any of the corresponding pages." This is probably true. Why? Because your blog is most likely updated often, has links back to it from other online pages and your blog has established a relationship with the serps. Similar to ActiveRain.

One of the reasons I think more and more Realtors are blogging, using ActiveRain, creating hub pages, online flyers, squidoo pages, etc. is because they have figured out it helps establish quality, related links backs to their website and helps website rankings.

I am not advocating Trulia here and I see other points that people have made about Trulia but in regards to this particular topic, I just don't see the proof. Yes, Trulia does outrank many Realtor websites but so do many blogs (even Active Rain does). Should Realtors stop using AR and every other online resource that helps bring in leads and helps sell their listings because these other online resources outrank their site?

If I am a seller and you are my Realtor - I am less concerned about how your site ranks but more concerned on how much exposure you can get my property and how fast you can get it sold.

That's why I haven't added many widgets. My husband warned me about doing that. There are some cute ones that I have added but not without researching first.

Great Post. Thanks for pointing this out I will be reading more on this.

Thanks for you info I agree we will look at our site and see what adjustments we need to make. Thanks again for the advice.

Thanks Bryant. I'll read that post. Nothing about underhandedness on the Internet surprises me anymore.

Oh wow, that is an interesting topic. I did not know widgets affected us in that way.

I have saved those links Bryant. I will be reading all of this a bit later this evening. I had heard that all this free stuff that looks so cool costs us, I just didn't understand , how much. So we all best clean things up and clear out a lot of the tools that make us look so clever but actually may make us less often found in searches. Great Post and many thanks for this very useful information.

Aloha Bryant,

Thank you for your informative post. I've heard rumors of widgets doing all sorts of nasty things covertly, however, it seems in your paticular situation it's more appearent. Watch out for the sticky widgets!

Peace,

Bryan, I've been drinking a lot of gogiberry juice, and every time I read about Trulia stealing Google Juice, I'm afraid they're sabotaging my diet!

BB, I have been hearing more about removing widgets from SEO posts for a while. I did like Rudy's (social Media Guru at Trulia.com) comment in your post. I think we really need a techy to explain the pros and cons... ARE WE GIVING AWAY OUR GOOGLE JUICE? aj

For this exact reason my business will not use them,

Thanks for the update. Sometimes it is good to be extra cautious!

Tom Davis Realtor - DE

I have been involved in SEO for a decade. I'm sorry Misty, but on this topic you really don't know what you are talking about.

Picking a random city... Chicago. OK I see Trulia's Chicago page is number 2 in the results for "Chicago Real Estate". Not bad! Now we look at the links pointing to Trulia's Chicago page. I see that Chicago agents are linking to this page with the phrase "Chicago Real Estate" See the bottom of the Trulia widget on this Chicago agent's page http://www.davenimick.com/myhomes.asp Now Google sees that lots of Chicago real estate sites link to this Trulia page with the phrase "Chicago Real Estate", and Trulia does not link back to them. It is not rocket science. Google's algorithm takes note that the agents are voting for Trulia and endorsing it as the authority site for "Chicago Real Estate".

Now, the outgoing link from your site may not be hurting your site's "juice", but if you are currently ranking less than the number 2 spot you are being hurt. Trulia is pushing your site down in the results by taking a spot ahead of you, and they are capturing visitors that you could be getting. On top of that you may be sending your own visitors away to Trulia's site when they click the link.

Trulia does have a well designed site, and that helps. But you also need incoming links and content to rank well... Both of those things are being provided by the agents!! Now that you have uploaded your content and added your links to them, they will let you pay a monthly fee to feature your own listings! Isn't that great!?! Thanks Trulia!

Some widgets are useful and even helpful....the rest are a waste of space, but I am concerned with the increasing number of big websites like Home.com that are stealing google juice and making it very difficult for individual Realtors to get at the top of the pile. Many of these are lead generators that put a pile of cash into a web site that merely "scrapes" our listing information and displays it (there must be a copyright law about this) and uses that lead to attract buyers/sellers. Then they sell said lead back with nothing more than an name phone or email address which may or may not be real for a ridiculously hefty fee. All these "services" are a waste of space that adds an extra middle man and will only increase what it costs to do business. This is nonsense as it offers no value to the consumer or the agent.

I didn't know that about widgets but it sure makes sense! I will have to read the blog you linked to. Thanks for the info, I won't be using the Trulia widget, that's for sure!

A lot of these sites are getting you to give them access to your content so they can rank higher.

MAY

2008

Jim - links from Realtor sites or widgets to Trulia in itself is not making Trulia dominate the search engines. That's only 1 small piece of the puzzle. It's a combination of many things. That combination of things is what many Realtors are lacking in their own sites.

Look at Realtor.com, Homes.com, Yahoo Real Estate and many of the other Real Estate specific directories that dominate the search engines and outrank many Realtor websites. Hey even look at Active Rain that outranks many Realtor websites. Do they have Real Estate widgets that are allowing them to dominate the search engines? Or could it possibly be a combination of things that many Realtors are not putting in place within their own sites?

I am just not convinced that Trulia's widgets are what is allowing them to dominate the search engines.

Brian, good information to know. I, too, have a Homes.com site........AND after they went "away" for a couple of weeks twice in one year (I think 2005 or 2006) I decided to garner more names and websites. This is an interesting discussion indeed. ;-)

Just another reason I don't have a widget on my site besides the one to get my posts delivered to your e-mail inbox.

Well, I read those posts and quite a few others. I guess I need to digest this all before I comment further, as least as far as the specific Trulia widgets are concerned. All the other free stuff out there may also have implications ( positive or negative and would be some great things to investigate. Their sites are full of advertising and presume that is how they make their income. What they do with the registration and linking information may be riddled with implications of the unintended consequences. Might be a really great post and useful information is some one did the research on all this.

This is something I always suspected but had never done any real research on it. Interesting stuff.

>(Misty says:) I am not advocating Trulia here and I see other points that people have made about Trulia but in regards to this particular topic, I just don't see the proof. <

Rudy from Trulia admitted the links are there, seems like proof to me.

Misty - Rudy at Trulia posted above "Yes, widgets help Trulia's SEO"

No one said it was not the ONLY thing making them rank, but it certainly helps a lot with the local terms. Some agents do not understand that they are helping a competing site rank higher than them. That is why Eric and Bryant posted about this.

For the record, Trulia ranks MUCH higher than Realtor.com, Yahoo, AR, etc.. Try searching any "zip code real estate", or "zip code homes for sale". Or any property address for a listing loaded on Trulia. They are numer 1 for all. I will pick another city, Miami... they are number 2 for "Miami real estate".

Those other portals have authority and they rank well because of it, but Trulia is outranking them all due to very aggressive SEO. There is nothing wrong with aggressive SEO, but there is no reason that agents need to help them with it. Are the Trulia widgets so essential to an agent's site that they need to keep them regardless of the risk associated with outgoing links and redirected visitors?

I guess that proves you get nothing for free in this world.

My question is, why do consumers think the person or entity in the number one or two spot is always the best choice?

Doreen - People are LAZY...particularly if they only have dial up. In that case the pages load very sllllllooooooowwwwwly. So they don't WANT to have to wander around too much. Others are just lazy. They have high speed but won't venture past spot one or two. Somehow to them being on top of Google = Quality - why? WHO KNOWS? Google is getting better at detecting content-rich material. In the end, content will rule - but until then, gaming the system will be necessary.

Does anyone know if the tendency to look further and research more sights is linked to regions where high-speed is more the norm? Perhaps being #1or #2 isn't so important if you are in a region where high speed access is the norm?

WOW! I go to bed, wake up and BAM! what an awesome discussion. You done good.

After reading all of these comments, especially the ones from Rudy, it's all starting to make sense to me. The problem with folks clicking over to Trulia instead of going directly to my site is that now they have many more options with who to work with. Rudy is pitching the fact that they send the consumer directly to us....as if that makes everything all right. Well it doesn't.

Fact is if you have a trulia widget on your site and YOUR consumer visitor clicks on the link at the bottom you may never hear from that lead again. They will be over at Trulia where your competitors are.

Our goal with our websites and blogsites should be to keep the consumer there once they have found you. ANY out going links on your site may be costing you money. Including all the blog rolls. I know from experience that I have been on someone else's site only to click on one of their outgoing links and have never made it back because the outgoing link was more interesting.

My sites are set up so that they all are linked to each other. I have 5 sites that are all interconnected. If a consumer does click on an outgoing link it just takes them to another one of my sites. All I want them to see is Broker Bryant and Poinciana real estate.

Someone mentioned ActiveRain also competing with us for Google juice. I don't agree with that at all. AR actually pulls my sites up. Plus whenever AR does show up on a search for my market it takes folks directly to me.

OK I have to go to work but will be back later.

Excellent post. There's no free lunch that I've found, even with widgets.

Oh...I have been so blind! Kick my butt and call me a democrat! Interesting stuff...thanks for the link!

The only thing that I see is that is seems to slow my pc down with too many widegets but it seems to get juice.

UGH, this may be the camel here and I LOVE my widgets. I don't think I can part with my vflyer and enewsletter sign up though. I do like the scrolling LED but maybe it's time :(

To take Blog Boy's (Broker Bryant's) comment one step further:

It is my understanding that the Average Consumer and Blogger have a very short attention span.

That being the case why would anyone knowingly and willingly do anything on their sites that would lead your potential Customers away from from your sight?

The whole idea is to get and keep their attention. Yes?

P.S. This is not rocket science ya know...It's just good business sense :)

TLW...ROAR!

I've never been too big on widgets because I don't like how busy and cluttered they make a site look. Most consumers don't want bells and whistles they want information.

However, having said that I think Trulia is one of the best sites out there. Like everything else it has to be worked properly. Trulia sends me traffic. My profile on Trulia has a PR-4. I answer very specific questions about my market on Trulia Voices and after every question I answer I link it to a specific blog post I wrote about that topic. I'm getting juice from them because they are a PR-7 and I'm a PR-4.

According to Mary McNight building backlinks from sites that have a higher page rank than your site is important to increase your PR.

It is all about relevance. IMHO A/R is losing it's real estate relevance. The consumers are on Trulia. I like to be where the consumers are.

BTW: Rudy and Pierre are great. Congrats on theWebby award.

Thanks, I took it off my other blog, didn't have one on AR, too many widgets already. I went and checked and yes putting in Ann ARbor took me to Trulia site and all the agents istings. Now why would a sane person do that ? I love Rudy but just don't want to send people away from me. Am I selfish ? yep

Mitchell is another great example of someone who is utilizing the tools that are provided to him

"Trulia sends me traffic"

"I answer very specific questions about my market on Trulia Voices and after every question I answer I link it to a specific blog post I wrote about that topic" - what an outstanding method.

Florence - "Rudy from Trulia admitted the links are there, seems like proof to me." Yep the links are there and it does help them get link backs to their site but like I have voiced before that is not the only reason Trulia ranks. Link backs in it self is not going to make Trulia dominate the search engines. It is a combination of things. This whole notion that widgets are taking away your sites ranking and Google juice is simply mis-leading and doesn't portray the entire story of why Trulia really does rank well.

Thanks for posting this to increase awareness. One widget here, one there, not that big a difference. A large collective of back links all with the appropriate keyword link is certainly hurting anyone attempting to rank well in the search engine rankings.

There are only 10 spots on page one of Google. If Trulia takes one, you just helped give away 10% of your pie if you are using their Widgets.

Misty -

This is the last time that I will point out that your SEO knowledge is limited at best. There are 2 aspects of SEO - on-site & off-site. On-site is completely within your control, and is what you keep harping on. You're going after VERY non-competitive terms, that's why you can make you can focus only on on-site, and rank.

Trulia is going after VERY competitive terms. They have to make sure they have proper on-site, and then make sure that others link to them. They are obtaining their links through widgets and badges. If you take away their widgets & badges, I guarantee they will fall off page 1 in most, if not all markets.

I'm sorry to be harsh, but you keep making the same incorrect points.

Our goal with our websites and blogsites should be to keep the consumer there once they have found you.

This is the statement I stick by....why give others "link/widget love" with outbound links to THEIR sites? The only outgoing ones I have are to docs or back to my AR profile.

BTW: I learned that from a really wise person on AR :)

Hello Eric, I'll leave it up to Misty to defend herself against the "SEO limited knowledge" assertion except to add that since her company places over 80% of all member flyers syndicated through them on Google page 1, a feat that no other syndication company can claim, suggests that she may know a thing or two on the subject.

I think that part of the problem here is that somewhere along the line the topic moved from "Is Trulia Stealing Your Juice" to "Is Trulia Getting Any Juice" and then a corollary argument "Are Their Widgets The Reason They Rank" While the later two are interesting topics, they just aren't the one that was being asked. I happen to believe, like Misty, that Trulia is getting high rankings for a multitude of reasons, the least of which being mostly passive links from their widgets.

Really, whether an agent should use another company's widget should be based on a simple cost/benefit analysis. Does an agent get more benefit having the widget on their site than whatever small cost is involved with providing the widget company possibly some minute amount of juice?

Eric - Trust me - we focus on offsite too. This is one of the reasons why we blog, we create feeds, yep - we even offer widgets and use many of the other "offsite" web resources out there tha allow us to obtain quality back links.

My point here is that widgets in themselves are not making Trulia dominate the search engines. Like you pointed out there are 2 aspects of SEO. Trulia does well because they have done well with both.

I am not convinced that if an Agent places a Trulia widget on their site it is going to cause their rankings to go down. If that same Agent continually works on his/her sites content AND yes also works on getting quality, relevant back links a Trulia widget isn't going to take that away.

Does it help Trulia overall - yes I agree that it does but it is not the only factor that is allowing Trulia to rank well. That was never my point and if I came off that way then I didn't make my point very clear I suppose. The point I am trying to make here is that 1 or 2 Trulia widgets on an individual Agents website is not going to take away Google juice. That is what this original post is leading you to believe.

If hundreds of agents in my market link to me and I don't link back to them I will rank higher than them. That is basic SEO. Why help a competitor? I'm not talking about "juice". I'm talking about agents never ranking higher than Trulia because they pushed them ahead.

On top of that you risk sending away visitors that may never come back. Is the widget so helpful to a site that is worth the risk?

We rank at the top of Google for thousands of property specific and area specific searches and have no links back to our site for those specific searches. Most of our flyers that rank have 0 links back to the flyers that rank. They do however have quality, relevant content that is specific to the searches they are ranking for. Link backs is only 1 small piece of the large SEO puzzle.

"On top of that you risk sending away visitors that may never come back." - Now that is a valid argument and one that I can understand.

The loosing Google juice to your site due to placing a Trulia widget with a link back to Trulia is one I am not convinced on.

I try not to put too many links to others on my sites except for my links page. I don't want people to leave my website.

Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?

Yes - there are several SEO experts that have weighed in and said that the widgets are helping Trulia rank dramatically. Trulia's own PR guy has admitted that they are designed to help them rank.

As a Listing Agent, my Sellers rely upon me to provide as much Internet exposure for their home as possible. Trulia is one of a dozen or so sites that I utilize to promote my listings. It's free and attracts a large amount of excellent traffic/exposure. Personally, I don't feel that Trulia has misled anyone, nor do I feel that they deserve such unwarranted criticism. I am saying this as a licensed real estate professional, not as an ActiveRain Staff member....

Rich, Now you must agree that everyone is open for criticism. Criticism helps us to grow. And maybe just maybe it will help Trulia to enhance their site for us.

I too have listings syndicated to Trulia but I don't use their widget or anyone's widget for that matter. I just don't want anyone visiting my site to click on a widget and be led away. That just kind of defeats the purpose of me getting them to my site to begin with.

In your comment you wrote "It's free and attracts a large amount of excellent traffic/exposure". Let me ask you this....if Trulia didn't exist do you think you would get more or less traffic to your own site? Or would it make any difference at all? Unless the answer is more then you are good to go.

My own personal opinion is I really don't care where the buyers come from as long as I own the listings. AS for sellers....well I get plenty of those already. I think most of these 3rd party websites really affect buyer agents more than listing agents. If I were a buyer agent I would be very very concerned about what the future holds.

OK I want to thank everyone for participating in this conversation. I've just been sitting on the sidelines and learning. Special thanks to Misty, Eric, Jim and Rudy for all the great info.

Oops almost forgot.....don't forget to click on the Broker Bryant widget up there in my post.

Bertha Bryant: You're absolutely right. We're all exposed to criticism, constructive, destructive, or otherwise. I felt as though much of the conversation was straying away from your original 'widgets' concern, to questioning a company's integrity. Can I get one of those Broker Bryant widgets for MY website? :)

Thanks for the info. I didn't know this.

Dave

Your bang on - as I have said many times there is no such thing as free. There is only so much google juice in the glass and I would rather my glass was full with only one straw than one with a dozen straws siphoning away.

Turns out Symantec has gotten in the game. They have just issued a patch that fixes the damage done by Trulia widgets. See here.

Following up on my previous comment, it turns out they've issued a counter-patch which should be installed immediately on your blog if you were infected. See below; go here to download and install it.

I've been Trulia-proofed!

MAY

2008

Gracious Rich...

I am going to make one of those widgets and have it redirect traffic over to Twitter :)

TLW...ROAR!

I am so glad you posted this, now I can feel good about deleting all my widgets.

MAY

2008

BB - There is quite a bit of information on the net about how widgets help the people who create them. It is just logical that they would. There have been many articles written about how a widget can "leak" your sites PR. Terrific debate.

heading to profile to take that stupid thing off my site which is always incorrect anyway - thanks somehow I missed this one... hope you and TLW are having a GREAT Mother's Day

Yeah, I think my quest for the perfext widget jusr ended - who wants to log onto my site to play Super Mario anyway?

MAY

2008

Hey Broker Bryant, thanks for the heads up. Make sense!

craziness. now how about these other gazillion widgets we install??

Wheh- What a discussion- I have learned B.B. can draw 'em in and that's for sure- TLW isn't so bad at that either.

As far as free hasn't it always been "buyer beware". What would you advise a real estate consumer when a deal seemed a little too good to be true?

If you can do better on your own with online advertising and building websites, than you should by all means go for it. If not and you don't have the time- than outsource. But research first. Find out all the details, do the homework. THe mantra to real estate buyers and sellers is to educate themselves about the locla market so they can get a deal they can more than live with, that they can be happy with. The same holds true for B2B, doesn't it?

As far as taking someone's traffic- Am I missing something-How many people can have spots 1, 2, and 3?

Consumers with a short attention span? Ummm...don't know about that. I am a consumer, maybe during certain times of the day I have a short attention span. Or if my 3 kids are pulling me in 3 different directions at the same time. If I find what I am looking for in the first few results- than I don't go any further. Over the past year or so, I find this a harder accomplishment, so I do look past the first few, I don't think I am alone.

Tried and true business by referral? If you do it right, no one can take that away from you.

Thanks for the post.

MAY

2008

Thanks for the heads up on that.

MAY

2008

Geez. this is the blind leading the blind and yelling "Fire!" at the same time.

MAY

2008

Hi fellow Rainers!

For some clarity on much of the misinformation and confusion going on here and elsewhere, please take the time to read our blog post - http://www.truliablog.com/2008/05/15/back-to-basics-trulia-was-built-to-help-improve-your-ro

Thank you

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com

Thanks for the link Rudy. I'll go check it out.

My pleasure Bryant!

Rudy

OK Rudy, I just read the post you had linked to. Very informative. Most of this stuff is way over my head. Are widgets good or bad? I don't know. I do know I don't use them for a multitude of reasons. Primarily because I just want folks to stay on my site. Secondly, I have found that widgets slow my site down and fill my PC with cookies.

Having said that I just received a buyer from Trulia voices who I am working with to purchase 500K vacation. he contacted me because he liked my honesty in the handful of answers that I have left on Trulia voices. So it certainly works. For that.....thank you!!

So I will pass on the widget, not just Trulia's, but ALL widgets and I will just keep doing what I do. I OWN Google for my area anyway.

Here is a question I asked on the HomeGain blog recently- How does a third party PARTNER with Realtors? http://blog.homegain.com/how-does-third-party-vendor-partner-with-realtors

MAY

2008

Misty,

If you really don't think those links to Trulia don't mean too much, please link everything you do to one of my sites.

Rudy,

Thanks for the propoganda.

MAY

2008

I have just started following this drama and while I understand that you would not want to send visitors or Google juice to Trulia I think that this is being blown way out of proportion. I have been involved in SEO for nearly 10 years so I know a bit about the industry. Those widget links are beneficial to Trulia, no doubt. They are using hypertargted anchor text and they provide quite a few links. If I were to use the widgets (any widget) I would simply remove the links. I think widgets can provide useful information and a good user experience as long as you keep the user on your site. If you provide an experience that they enjoy they are more likely to stick around and come back. Nothing wrong with that.

And there is nothing wrong with Trulia providing widgets and of course including a link back to their site. This is standard protocal for all widgets. It helps with SEO and it helps bring more visitors. Nothing at all evil or shady about it. And if you think that if every realtor removes the Widgets from their site is somehow going to kill Trulia's SERPS you are sorely mistaken. Halfdeck, who is a pretty well respected SEO, wrote a good article about this here. Trulia has tons and tons of page rank passing links from highly trusted sources and like Misty said, they have all the on-site SEO factors in place that allow them to benefit from those links. As long as sites like CNN, Businessweek, and other trusted web sites link to them and they continue to add relevant content to their site, which has strong technical SEO techniques in place, they will continue to rank very well.

I agree that you are not helping yourselves by keeping the links in the widgets but I think that the overall affect is being overstated. I also think that utilizing some widgets while keeping users on your site can be beneficial in making your site a useful resource, which will keep users coming back and compell others to link to you.

JUN

2008

BT, alot of this is over my head as well. I think you have the right idea, when in doubt, just pass. I luckily never got so far as adding widgets except on my #1 site, and they interestingly enough, seem to have been removed without me asking.

JUN

2008

LOVE the debate! Mark Pilatowski-for those of us not so html savy, how do you disable those links. I just added one of the Google widgets to my site and was trying to figure out how to eliminate the hyperlinks. It was not clear which part of the code pertained to them.

JUN

2008

Not to side track the thread, but I'd like to know how to disable them as well. Also, does puting listings on Trulia take away as well or is it jus the widgets? Still learning...

I personally do not believe in the theorie of stealing Google juice. I believe it actually helps to link to sites like Trulia. The question is if their fame is deserved or not, when they really do use a system that makes real estate webmasters work for them without really benefitting all that much. I like their site, their blog and team looks cool, but the question is whether or not Google is doing a great service by rewarding those who figure new ways to convince webmasters to advertise their websites for free.

OCT

2008

So then, how about Altos Research and their widgets? Same thing?

Altos Research is not competing with me for real estate related google searches.

OCT

2008

Bryant - great information, and debate here. In my area, the ranking changes almost daily. Good to know about the widgets.

NOV

2008

Hi Bryant ,your blog is good!

anyone know how to extract data from a web database. For example, how can I extract movie information from http://www.imdb.com/ into a relational database? Is there any existing tools to do this? Or need I write some codes?
Thanks a lot!

There is a Screen Scraping service, visit www.knowlesys.com for more details.

FEB

2009

Someone said a few exits back in the comments that wonder if there is a study if you have dial up vs high speed if you tend to dig deeper than first 10 on page one? I know kids who spend a considerable amount of time wheelin' around the net avoid the top sponsored search results. My son told me "Dad...they usually have nothing in there and paid to be there"..so they check what organically climbed to the top as most creditable and worth their eye ball scan. I know I don't limit it to page one...and in the case of saving money on something or knowing more, digging deeper is part of the discovery. There may also be a better site a ways back that is new and climbing but not up to the first page plateau yet. Enjoyed Misty's contributions here at AR University.

APR

2009

Very interesting, I have been weary of these widgets for quite some time....I did not really have a reason, but I am glad I have not littered them onto my sites.

SEP

2009

I can see how this could happen. I always utlized YouTube and Google Videos, if I am going to ad ANY technology. They don't steal your SERP's and Google LOVES LOVES LOVES videos on blogs. However, I personally have used Trulia widgets and haven't lost any rankings or Google juice, perhaps because my link popularity is so high?

Chris Hallmark - http://www.freerealestatemarketinglab.com

JAN

2010

Hi Bryant,

Good post. Excellent job. Very informative.

Best -Sash

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Bryant Tutas Broker/REALTOR(R) Tutas Towne Realty, Inc

Poinciana, FL

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Bryant Tutas-Tutas Towne Realty, Inc

Address: 628 Grand Canal Dr, Poinciana, Fl, 34759

Office Phone: (407) 870-9003

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