Fri 11 May 2007
What up?
Posted by Marlow Harris under Real Estate
[4] Comments
Trulia unveiled several new features this morning, 1) Trulia Voices, a feature that will let visitors assess “curb appeal” online and 2) a property alert feature that will let buyers to keep an eye on any home and alert them when it comes on the market, is sold or has a price drop.
I signed up right away, to get that link love flowin’ and just hope that they don’t do like Wikipedia and have outbound links include the nofollow tag. (They said the nofollow tag was to prevent link spamming since some search engines do not count links containing the tag towards any weighing of the destination page, so a link from Wikipedia will no longer boost the position of a page in search results. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of me posting, if you know what I mean. It’s interesting to note, however, that while the nofollow tag is added to the standard outbound links, it isn’t applied to inter-wiki links, including links to Wikia, Wikipedia’s for-profit spin off, but I digress…..)
When Trulia first came out, I authorized a feed from my website www.SeattleDreamHomes.com so all my listings would appear on their site. That lasted for about 4 months until I was notified by my brokerage that this was not allowed. Fast-forward a year later and Coldwell Banker National announced their partnership with Trulia. I asked my broker if our local firm would opt-out and was told that they had now decided to participate. However, I believe all inquiries from Trulia about my listings go to my broker, rather than directly to me…… oh well. I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now, so I’ll complain later. But it’s definitely a point of contention.
RealTown.com also just announced the opening of the InternetCrusade’s RealTown Store, which features an assortment of real estate-related goods and services all in one place. I created a webpage profile on RealTown, again to add my link. Not sure if they’ve added a no-follow order too, hoping they did not. I was told I could check in Firefox, so may try that…..
Squidoo also offers opportunities to add your profile and make a page (which I’ve done), as does Active Rain, where I’ve made a Seattle Dream Homes page. And Zillow provides a great opportunity with their agent profile pages, and I was able to customize mine very easily. It allows for entry of a great deal of information and also shows any questions or answers you’ve given.
One of the best new opportunities to arise is the Inman Wiki. There, not only can you create a profile page, but if your articles are of interest, they will link back to your website or blog for follow-up info. I’m looking forward to writing more for Inman and hope to discuss the upcoming Bloggers Connect conference in July, where I’ll be speaking on “Finding Your Voice” on your blog. Stay tuned for details!







May 11th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Hi Marlow,
Megan from Trulia here – thanks for the great post! To follow up w/ you on nofollows, the links in your Trulia Voices profile page don’t have nofollows in place and, of course, we encourage members to add urls to their site and blogs. Given that you get more visibility on Trulia the more questions you answer, adding links should also be a great way to introduce buyers and sellers on Trulia to your site.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
That’s great to know. Thanks!
May 13th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Marlow,
Interesting comments about Trulia. I looked at it briefly and still waiting for the jury. I lke some of the features, just that the questions for Tucson seemed enreal. Once I see a little more I can make and informed decision yeah or neigh.
Grew up across the water from you. I’m a CK grad from several decades ago.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:10 am
I’ve answer a few of the questions of Trulia, but I think something a little strange is going on. It seems everyone has identical questions for each city, and they’re worded exactly the same. I figured it was to have content at launch, so I answered them anyway. Seems to have a lot of potential – I just hope it catches on.