What does redirected mean? When a site is redirected like HomeRentalAds you are still visiting the actual HomeRentalAds.com site for a fraction of a second and then sent on to the Rentals.com site. This had been announced about a month ago.

This of course is great news for me (RentVine.com) because that means I will now go up in the rankings one spot.

Was this wise of Primedia (the company that owns HomeRentalAds)? No, but I am not complaining because it is good for me.

HomeRentalAds.com just a couple of years ago used to be the #2 home rental web site of the US. Now it is gone – dead – disappeared. I bet Robert Fowler the person who started it is sad to see it go.

I am doing another happy dance right now! Yes Primedia, sometimes I do love you!

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

HomeRentalAds.com Is Now Redirecting to Rentals.com

“On Friday, 7/13/07 HomeRentalAds.com will no longer be accepting new
ad postings.
On Friday, 8/31/07 HomeRentalAds.com will be retired and the URL
will be redirected to Rentals.com.”

HomeRentalAds URL will be “retired”. I wonder if they would want to sell me the domain name?

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

HomeRentalAds.com Redirect To Rentals on Aug 31

” In June 2006, HomeRentalAds was purchased and Woods, along with other employees, found themselves without jobs.”

“While working for HomeRentalAds.com, Woods quickly advanced to the position of marketing manager. He was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the site, search engine optimization, sales, brand identity, and handled customer service. In this capacity, he was credited with establishing the sites’ position as one of the dominant online advertising sources for home rentals and drastically increased sales.”

It will be interesting to see if Joe can get his new site ranked well in the next 6-12 months – if he can repeat his success than this guy knows what he is doing and Primedia lost another good employee.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Joe Woods from HomeRentalAds Starts New Site

On Alexa my site RentVine is beating HomeRentalAds in traffic. See the blue line (me) crossing over HomeRentalAds in red.

Looks like another of my predictions I made at the end of 06 is coming true.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

RentVine Beating HomeRentalAds on Alexa

I know some of my readers might be getting tried of my bragging about my upward movement on Google – but I have been waiting a couple of years for this and I gotta brag just a little.

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

RentVine Beating HomeRentalAds on Google for Denver

I love Alexa when it shows my site starting to catch my main competitors. For a brief moment in Oct 06 I was actually beating HomeRentalAds.

Not bad for one guy working out of his basement up against a large company. (I am patting myself on my back right now).

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

HomeRentalAds vs Rent Vine

So I checked the WayBack Machine and confirmed that they used to be (see bottom of page). The Way Back Machine is a cool site that shows you how sites used to look.

This goes back to my theory that they are just letting HomeRentalAds drop and not take care off it.

I don’t understand this, why pay for a site that used to rank #2 and then just drop it? For Primedia to get value from this purchase they need to hold it up in the rankings because if they let it slip too far another site will grab their current #3 spot.

From my calculations House.info is about to take that #3 site from them. And house.info is a free site.

I am starting to think that Primedia might not be able keep three sites in the top 3 spots while try to cultivate their flagship site Rentals up the rankings all at the same time. Anyone else thinking this too?

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

HomeRentalAds not a NARPM Affiliate Now?

• Rentals.com came out of beta
• RentClicks is sporting a fancy new logo
• RentalHouses get a new pricing page

But why is HomeRentalAds not getting any attention? Is Primedia planning to let it die a slow death. Why is it not getting any love?

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Why is HomeRentalAds not Getting any Love?

From my research it appears that Primedia has bought yet another online rental ad company HomeRentalAds.com.

The other day when I was doing a little research on my competition I noticed that the domain record changed for HomeRentalads.com. It changed from the original owner to Consumer Source Interactive which is owned by Primedia from what I can tell.

I went to the Primedia site as well as the HomeRentalads site but I could not find any press releases on this issue.

I guess it was a good fit since Consumer Source Interactive and Homerentalads are both located within Georgia.

I am guessing also that Primedia did really well for their share holders when they bought RentClicks by placing a ton of affiliate ads all over the site and generating more revenue. They must have done so well with RentClicks that they decided to purchase another one.

So what does that mean for my industry? So many questions to ask:

• Will Primedia keep HomeRentalads the way it is now or change to the RentClicks format?
• If you sign up on Homerentalads (much cheaper for unlimited plan) will your ads also appear on the much higher traffic site Rentclicks?
• Is Primedia done, or are they going to acquire more companies like this one?

It will be interesting to see what happens. My guess is you will see affiliate ads on the Homerentalads site in a few weeks.

Update: Primedia has also acquired RentList.com which was a sister site for HomeRentalAds.

Update 11/23/06: My guess above was right, not long after Primedia acquired HomeRentalads, HomeRentalads has banner ads all over the site.

[tags]Primedia, homerentalads, PRM[/tags]

Post from: Dave Dugdale RentVine.com

Looks like Primedia has acquired yet another company