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Zillow Shares The Limelight With Its Members (How They Shoved the Trulia No-Follow Tags In Trulia's Face)

Zillow.com announces that it offers a "co-branding" link strategy for users :

What is it?

If you place a Zillow URL on your Web site or blog with special coding, and it's clicked, your photo, contact info and link to your Web site appear at the top of each Zillow page they see.

You can see when you click the link that a "banner ad" hovers with the user as he/she navigates the Zillow site, reminding him/her of the origination. At any time during the navigation of Zillow, the user can instantly click back to your home page.

Why Use it?

Co-branding boosts your visibility among the visitors you send from your Web site to Zillow.com.
Your contact information follows visitors throughout their session on Zillow.
Simply add the parameter "scrnnm=zillowscreenname" to the end of any URL that links to Zillow.com, and substitute your Zillow account screen name for "zillowscreenname." If you don't know your screen name, you can find it by clicking on My Zillow.
If you have spaces in your screen name, replace them with dashes when appending this code to your links.

For example:

Zillow screen name: Joe Smith
Co-Branding code: ?scrnnm=Joe-Smith
For example, to link to the Zillow home page: http://www.zillow.com/?scrnnm=Joe-Smith

There really is no down side to using this new feature. If you plan to link to Zillow, add the code to ensure that a reader will keep you "top of mind". While Zillow already has a tremendous amount of traffic, it is nice to see a realty.bot that treats its professional partners like partners.

Unlike SOME realty.bots dressed up as "friends".

ADDED BONUS: Listen to this 8 minute interview with Zillow's Drew Meyers about the "co-branding" policy

Posted by Brian Brady- America's VA Home Loan Broker on 07/09/2008 11:35 PM

Comments (18)

zillow, zillowcom, drew meyers interview

Post is included in group: Online Marketing Help Center
Post is included in group: Zillow Discussion Group

18 Comments on Zillow Shares The Limelight With Its Members (How They Shoved the Trulia No-Follow Tags In Trulia's Face)

JUL

2008

Awesome! Thats Great! Have you tried using it yet? I would like to know if your getting results.

Thanks,

Nathan Diones

Click the first link, Nathan. You'll see my name at the top of the zillow page (along with a link to my home page)

CraigsList puts no follow tags every time you place a link to your web site on your listings there. So instead of inserting a link, I just type my web site on the page. I know it creates an extra step for the customer, since they'll have to copy and paste, or type in my site if they want to view the listing, but the no-follow tag pissed me off and I have control issues.

Then you'll LOVE what Zillow has done, Lisa

Some of this is over my head, but our company broke it's agreement with trulia for some reason...?

JUL

2008

Oh my goodness, I thinks all of this studying is paying off. I understand what you said and it makes sense! Thanks for sharing. Bookmarked for the "weekend catch up on computer work" part of my day!

Thanks for sharing. I haven't been following Zillow to the extent that I should. I might have overlooked this information for a long time without your help.

That nice of them

Fair Warning: If you click on Brian's example, his happy face will haunt you all morning. :-)

P.S. I'm not getting it to work with the Search Tool widget code ...

action="http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.htm?scrnnm="bobtaylorprop" -- this doesn't brand

action="http://www.zillow.com/search?scrnnm="bobtaylorprop" -- this gets me the Zillow 404 page

action="http://www.zillow.com/search?scrnnm="bobtaylorprop"/Search.htm -- this also gets a 404

Maybe David G will pop in and enlighten me....

http://www.zillow.com/?scrnnm=bobtaylorprop

Cheryl, try this.

Brian, I know that works, :-)

But I want the results from the Search Tool widget to also be branded (I have the Search Tool widget in a number of places on different web sites ....

If a site visitor uses the widget located on one of my sites, it takes them directly to the Zestimate for the property ... but I can't get ~that~ Zestimate landing page to "brand".

It's not high on the priority list, but it has now become a challenge. :-)

Here's the complete widget code:

<form method="get" action="http://www.zillow.com/search/RealEstateSearch.htm" name="formSearchBar" id="formSearchBar" target="_blank"> <table summary="Zillow.com Address Search" style="width: 170px; background: #E2EEFF; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; color: #555; margin: 15px 0 15px 0;"> <tr> <td align="right" style="padding: 8px 8px 3px 8px"><img src="http://www.zillow.com/static/images/searchbox_logo.gif" alt="Zillow.com" width="75" height="13" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left" style="color: #d61; font-weight: bold; padding: 0 8px; font-size: 12px;">Get free, instant home valuations</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" style="padding: 5px 8px 0 8px; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.5;"> <label for="addrstrthood"><strong>Address (optional)</strong></label><br /> <input name="addrstrthood" id="addrstrthood" maxlength="100" style="font-size: 10px; color: #555; border: 1px solid #8095B0; width: 99%; padding: 1px 0;" /><br /> <label for="citystatezip"><strong>City, State</strong> OR <strong>ZIP</strong></label><br /> <input name="citystatezip" id="citystatezip" maxlength="100" style="font-size: 10px; color: #555; border: 1px solid #8095B0; width: 99%; padding: 1px 0;" /> <input type="hidden" name="s_cid" value="001" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" style="padding: 5px 8px 8px 8px"><input type="image" src="http://www.zillow.com/static/images/btn_go.gif" alt="go button" /></td> </tr> </table> </form>

P.S. I just tried placing the scrnnm right after the zillow.com in the widget code. Nope, that doesn't do it either.

Unless I'm not getting the branding because I'm logged in??

I think Drew mentioned that the widgets already have code imbedded to co-brand you. Listen to the podcast, CJ; it's about 8 minutes long.

Hey Cheryl-

It appears the URL structure on our search interface is preventing the co-branding from working correctly when linking to our search urls. I'll follow up with our developers, but this appears to be a software bug. We'll work to resolve the issue as quickly as we can, but I do want to set realistic expectations -- we are planning to roll out changes to our search urls that should resolve this problem, so it might not be something we fix before those url structure changes are released in the next few weeks.

Sorry I can't give you better news like an easy fix :(

Drew, Thank You!!!!

Thanks so much Brian for this information. I just went out to my website and added the Zillow link. It took me less than 2 minutes, and there I am at the top of the Zillow page. What a great tool!

I'm going to paste in the code Drew gave me to brand the Search Tool widget.

<form method="get" action="http://www.zillow.com/search/RealEstateSearch.htm" name="formSearchBar" id="formSearchBar" target="_blank"> <input type="hidden" name="scrnnm" value="bobtaylorprop" /> <table summary="Zillow.com Address Search" style="width: 170px; background: #E2EEFF; border-style:solid;border-width:2px;border-color:blue; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; color: #555; margin: 15px 0 15px 0;"> <tr> <td align="right" style="padding: 8px 8px 3px 8px"> <img src="http://www.zillow.com/static/images/searchbox_logo.gif" alt="Zillow.com" width="75? height="13? /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left" style="color: #d61; font-weight: bold; padding: 0 8px; font-size: 12px;">Zillow your property! Free, instant home valuations</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" style="padding: 5px 8px 0 8px; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.5;"> <label for="addrstrthood"><strong>Address (optional)</strong></label><br /> <input name="addrstrthood" id="addrstrthood" maxlength="100? style="font-size: 10px; color: #555; border: 1px solid #8095B0; width: 99%; padding: 1px 0;" /><br /> <label for="citystatezip"><strong>City, State</strong> OR <strong>ZIP</strong></label><br /> <input name="citystatezip" id="citystatezip" maxlength="100? style="font-size: 10px; color: #555; border: 1px solid #8095B0; width: 99%; padding: 1px 0;" /> <input type="hidden" name="s_cid" value="001? /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" style="padding: 5px 8px 8px 8px"><input type="image" src="http://www.zillow.com/static/images/btn_go.gif" alt="go button" /></td> </tr> </table> </form>

If you want to use it, remember to change this field to show your own Zillow screen name

On the other hand, we won't complain too much if you don't change it. :-)

Great stuff, Brian. Gonna try to get to it later tonight. People are going to go to Zillow anyhow (and many clients I have used do, but they also understand the limitations and the need to have other data) so why not take advantage.

Jeff

FEB

Thanks for sharing. I am confused on how to set up the tag though? Just replace your example with my name?

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