I was checking my Google rankings last week for some terms that I normally don’t look at, and as usual I saw that Rentals.com had the number #1 spot, however something caught my eye in Rentals.com’s result.

In the snippet of the Rentals.com result something looked very familiar. After reading it twice, I said to myself, “Hey, I wrote that.” The next thought in my head was, “Oh, Google must have screwed up some how and put my text there – there is no way Rentals.com would have copied it.”

So I went to the actual page on the Rentals.com site and then pulled up the corresponding page on my site and sure enough an entire paragraph had been copied word-for-word from my site.

I had to call my wife over and have her look at it, perhaps I was missing something. She saw the same thing. So odd to see a large company copy from a small one, typically it is the other way around.

My next thought was, “Wow, I wonder how long”. So using the WayBack Machine I noticed that it had been copied as far back as August or perhaps earlier than that.

To be honest I was not mad or upset, mostly curious how this could have happened. I have never filed a DMCA against anyone before because you can usually never find the person to file it against, so I thought calling Rentals.com directly would be the best course of action.

So I picked up the phone and dialed Rentals.com (that felt strange). I had a conversation with an employee of Rentals.com.

The person I spoke with was nice and told me action would be taken right away. Sure enough and hour or so later the content was gone.

I’m actually sad to hear that Rentals.com is pulling all their TV commercials – at least that is how I read the following:

In the third quarter, we conducted a one-time limited Rentals.com targeted marketing and advertising campaign. We believe that the best way to continue to drive revenue growth is to deliver results for our advertisers and one of the ways to deliver results is to provide traffic to the listings. The campaign was aimed at driving traffic to the website to increase links for property owners and building brand awareness among potential advertisers. The campaign was effective in generating leads and increasing sales volume but not at an acceptable cost, and we’re working on other ways to achieve the desired results.

I liked the TV spots because it helps all of us to let people know there are other ways to advertise their rental.

I love it when I beat out Rentals.com in the Google rankings. Yes, I just have to brag about it.

This time it is for Houses for rent in Dallas.

I am hearing that Steve Huey’s last day was a couple of days ago and on his site at HueyEquity.com he talks about his 8 months at Rentals.

“Co-led the turnaround effort at RentalHouses.com where during his eight month tenure he helped the company triple sales, and listings as well as position the company as the market leader in listings within the top 50 US markets. This led to the company’s sale in January 2007 to Consumer Source, Inc.”

On the Primedia site it shows that Robert Turnbull is now Vice President, Sales & Business Development.

It appears that several Rentals.com employee’s have started a hub of blogs just recently.

Since Rentals.com does not have a blog, I am always curious if any of these blogs are the official voice of the company or just personal blogs in which they love their company so much that they have to talk about them in such a sales related fashion.

Here is the second rentals.com blog I found.

(cough -splog – cough).

Rentals.com is putting on several Property Management Academy classes in Florida and Las Vegas.

I have no idea who the instructors are, but two names are located close to the class schedule: Lisa Draughon and Bill Quirk – anyone know what they are teaching at this “academy”?

I am hearing rumors that Steve Huey (SVP and General Manager of Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com) is leaving. Possibly Robert Turnbull will be taking over.

I sent an email to Steve to confirm this, but I have not heard back yet.

I am also hearing that this is the first month in the RentClicks (Rentals.com) history that listings and revenue are down over the same period last year.

With Steve Huey possibly leaving and Jamie Gallo gone, perhaps it is time for property managers to think about RentVine.com.

From Rentals.com full page ad in the last NARPM newsletter:

“With nearly 4 million potential renters visiting Rentals.com each month, you’ll enjoy access to the broadest base of qualified renters possible, better than any other source, online or print.”

I think the best month they have ever had was 700K unique visits as estimated by the free metric sites. Their claim of 4 million potential renters to me indicates unique visitors (not recounting someone that comes back again and again each month).

I could totally be wrong on this issue because the free metric sites like Compete.com and Quantcast.com can be off – but by over 3 million – I don’t think so.

If they are referring to total visits for the month then this number would make sense. If that is the case they should in my opinion rephrase that copy to read:

“With nearly 4 million visits to Rentals.com each month, you’ll enjoy access to the broadest base of qualified renters possible, better than any other source, online or print.”

But then again it might be an honest mistake since they have other obvious stuff wrong, like still using the word RentClicks.com on their home page:

“Whether you’re looking for great rentals or you’re a property management company needing to fill your vacancies. RentClicks.com is the undeniable smart choice.”

Update: From the RentalHouses.com site:

“Rentals.com and its family of websites attract more than 2.2 million unique visitors every month.”