Trulia Widgets and Link Hoarding – Who wins the title of Interloper King
May 9, 2008
Noone wants to be on the bottom of the heap. No one wants to come in last place and no one–I mean no one, wants to be crowned Interloper King in the online real estate marketing industry. There is no glory in inserting your company between a home buyer or seller and the real estate professional there to serve them. It is a tough business that is (by its nature) symbiotic as best, parasitic on average, and cannibalistic at worst.
The following is my opinion on how the world of Interlopers shakes out. I am an interloper. WHAT? YES. I feed my family by helping REALTORS market their listings! So what distinctions separate me from Trulia? Several things:
1. I am building the REALTORS’ online web presence FOR THEM. It is THEIR asset. They own it and control it. It is their world. I just live in it. This separates me from HomeGain, Trulia, Zillow, REALTOR.com and any other website that is NOT owned by a REALTOR.
For the longest time this has been the criteria that I have used to determine how deeply I would participate in a site. No REALTOR ownership–no go. REALTORS do not teach clients to rent houses, they teach them how to BUY homes. Why RENT your online presence when you can CREATE it.
Now that that is said, there are varying degrees of Interloping going on out there. We (in my opinion), would be remiss in not pointing them out. The next distinctions separate out the competitors further.
2. To what extent is the third party site actually promoting themselves or are they honestly trying to facilitate the connection between client and REALTOR in the most expeditious way possible? This was brought up by Louis Cammarosano and it gave me some pause today. It is possible IMO for a third party company to create advertising solutions that help REALTORS market homes in a way that spends less time marketing them and more time promoting the REALTOR. When you factor this criteria in, HomeGain quickly moves into spot Number 2 in terms of being a REALTOR friendly enterprise.
3. Then comes the channels that the interlopers market in. In other words, where are they getting their traffic from? Are they going in channels typically not done by REALTORS and ADDING to the exposure that a REALTOR gets or are they competing with a REALTOR in the same channel? Trulia is now using the Widgets and Listings to compete HEAD ON with REALTORS for search engine positioning in Google. Google San Diego Real Estate or Phoenix Real Estate and you will see what I mean.
Zillow, whether through ignorance or choice has not gone that route. Making them (somewhat) better than Trulia (wouldn’t take much.) but they (as of today’s date are STILL no following listings). This, in my opinion, along with the fact that they are using a REALTORS own listings to compete with him, puts them clearly in the adversary role. Zillow and Trulia (in my opinion) have a parisitic relationship with REALTORS, and Trulia is actually trying to kill off their “valued partners” and go cannibalistic. HomeGain is a more symbiotic relationship. It is still renting web presence vs buying and I still disagree with that as an overall practice, however, I have grown weary of watching people screech at REALTORS about being “transparent” while they are not being transparent with us. Likewise, I have grown sick and tired of them getting links FROM REALTORS and then not returning the favor.
Trulia wins the title of Interloper King in the real estate industry. Zillow is #2 with a bullet IMO.
Just my thoughts.
Have you seen the posting on the HomeGain Blog – http://blog.homegain.com/how-does-third-party-vendor-partner-with-realtors?
Did I misunderstand your posting or perhaps theirs?
My interpretation of their posting is that you endorse HomeGain. On the contrary I thought you were saying it is the lesser of some other evils but that you didn’t whole-heartedly support their model either.
Would you care to comment or clarify?
Thank you!
Sure. Let me take a stab at it.
I don’t “endorse” anyone except myself, and the services of some close friends. Morgan Carey and RealEstateWebmasters would be an example. He builds a better real estate website than anyone else currently on the market and so I say–use his. I endorse him enthusiastically.
In my world, the first and most important thing that you can do is to build your OWN online assets. This means that putting your effort into building the online assets of others can be and usually is counter productive. Period. Point. End of story.
That is what I do and the services I provide is consulting to help people in ALL industries to build their online marketing presences and make them successful. Typically using SEO is how I do it.
That having been said, I think HomeGain has been unfairly “lumped in” with some of the other folks that many REALTORS who call “Interlopers”. I think there ARE varying degrees of being a Third party lead provider / information provider. (I don’t beleive for a minute that folks like Trulia or Zillow will stay on an advertising monetization model–the temptation will be too great.
HomeGain has been unfairly labelled with the others when they do (at least) one thing differently than the others. They DON’T use MLS data from REALTORS to lure leads and then sell them back to REALTORS. That is a huge difference. They simply use advertising to find folks who are looking for REALTORS and they try to connect them to you as quickly as possible.
So in that sense, I guess I was saying that they are the lesser of evils. I do not like it when I see people get mis-characterized and I do think Trulia (ESPECIALLY right now)intends the industry harm. I do not feel that way about HomeGain. They are an interloper, but their goal seems to be to partner and make a buck or two.
I guess, the way I read what Louis wrote, I did not get the feel that he was touting me as an endorsement. I think he feels very misjudged by some REALTORS and was taking my post as an opportunity to say “See-we aren’t THEM”.
THEM (T! and Z!) have gotten a lot of positive press and exposure, while as Louis feels that their approaches are detrimental to the REALTOR. I see his point.
I hope that clarifies the fact that a) I do not ENDORSE them,but b) I do see some clear lines of demarcation that make them better than some of the others.
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I find it interesting the situational ethics in play here.
Hey Bob,
First off, I agree that (to some extent), we all have situational ethics. We try to stay objective, but to think any of us totally is objective is not wise IMO.
I respect your knowledge level of SEO and the fact that you are holding down the #1 spot for San Diego real estate attests to that. I would love your input on the following:
1) Do you think there is a difference between the third party folks? are they all good? all bad?
2) Do you think Trulia’s practice of getting links from #1 expert by getting links on their templates is good SEO / bad SEO / or it just is was it is.
3) Is is possible for HomeGain (whom I used to rail against) to have cleaned up their act to a point where they are different from the others (at least to a degree)?
As always, I appreciate you visiting the blog and look forward to your insight.
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