One unfortunate side effect of Trulia’s meteoric, dare I say Hasselhoffian rise in traffic as of late has been the concomitant increase in complaints. One of the most common inquiries is, “Why is my listing not found on Trulia? ” Several agents have let us know that while they can see some of their listings on Trulia, other properties of theirs are nowhere to be found. (Sticking to my interstellar/Baywatch analogy) Our task therefore is to retrieve the listings from a black hole and put them into syndication.
Sometimes we can resolve the issue with little difficulty, but other times, the task is not quite so trivial as overcoming interstellar gravitational fields of unfathomable strength. Consider the following two listings in Trulia’s internal database:
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Property One
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Property Two
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| Source: | prudentialfloridawci.com | expertrealty.com |
| Address: | (none given) | 6903 NW 91st Ter |
| Location: | Tamarac, FL 33321 | Tamarac, FL 33321 |
| Beds,Baths,sqft: | 2,2,1572 | 2,2,(none given) |
| Price: | $299,900 | $299,900 |
| MLS: | F729936 | (none given) |
These are in fact unique properties, but how can Trulia tell? Property 1 does not include an address, so for all we know, the address is 6903 NW 91st Ter. Property 2 does not include information on sqft or MLS#, so for all we know, those values are 1572 and F279936, respectively. Unlike Baywatch, we don’t display twins, so to be safe we only show one, favoring the one that supplies an address.
The avoidance of falling victim to false-duplicate status is but one advantage of submitting full and complete information to Trulia. More information about properties also allows us to build search and filter systems of increasing sophistication, helping us reach our goal of being the best real estate search experience on the Web.
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July 20th, 2006 at 4:18 am
We are a small independant office in Los Angeles. A while back I created a feed of our listings for Trulia. They never appeared. When I emailed Trulia and asked why, I received a reply that feeds of less than 50 properties were not accepted.
So I am stuck with hoping that Trulia picks up a feed from one of our print advertisers, such as Homes and Land. As it is, some of our listings appear in Trulia, some do not. The ones that do appear are older, not newer. Is that helping the public? When the newest listings in an area do not appear?
Although, this thought flies in the face of Trulia’s business model: I would suggest that you allow submission of individual listings by brokers or private parties - online - using a data form that would require input of basic information such as address and square footage.
Then, in the event of duplicates, your policy could be to give the manuaaly inputted submission direct from the broker or private party priority over the record submitted by a third party - such as Homes and Land.
July 20th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Pardon the growing pains. Trulia has spent a great deal of developmental resources to allow offices of any size to display their listings on Trulia. We now accept feeds of any size- even a single property- so long as the feed is updated regularly and so its data stays fresh. Just create a feed and then submit it through the form at http://www.trulia.com/submit_feed
The manual submission idea is a good one, and it would also be valuable in enabling agents to correct any flawed information about their properties. This would likely require agents to register, somehow “claim” properties as theirs, and have the ability to edit price, description, sqft, picture, etc.
We’ve got all sorts of ideas in the Trulia pipeline to reach our goal: to be the best real estate search experience the web has to offer. Stay tuned.
July 21st, 2006 at 4:13 am
Thank you, Jeff! Yikes, now I need to bring that feed current!
Being able to claim our properties, and edit them is a terrific idea!