Ever wonder why Trulia.com can out rank so many rental sites even though Trulia has nothing to do with rentals?
In fact if you look at the this Trulia page for Prescott you will notice the word rent is not even on the page, even though they rank #3 for the phrase “Prescott houses for rent” in Google.
If you look closely at their code you can see the word “rent” is actually being used on the page but it is hidden from view using a hidden <div> tag.
Are they doing this on purpose? No, I don’t think so, they are trying to give the user a nice experience by not messing up the page. Google looks at intent – and I don’t think they are intentionally doing this to get people looking for rentals on their site but I am sure they get a ton of traffic because of it.
Since Trulia has so much trust and pages linking to it, all they have to do is insert one hidden word on the page and it can out rank rental sites like mine. I am not being a cry baby here, since I know I can out rank them in Prescott if I wanted to, I am just trying to get the conversation going about hidden div’s.
I would love to use hidden div’s like this to improve my user’s experience but I am too scared I would get kicked out of the index, but Truila doesn’t need to worry since they are a large company and probably have a person at Google they can call if they get hurt in the rankings.
If someone at Google (Matt Cutts / Brian White) is reading this, I think you should create a tweak so this doesn’t happen. I think they would work on this anyway since a person looking for rentals and lands on Trulia’s site is not a good user experience.
I couldn’t help ask this question to Matt on the new Ask a Google Engineer:
Update 2/3/09: I just saw the Greg Boser mentioned that Trulia has been Google slapped and sure enough I now can’t find Trulia ranking for “Prescott Houses for Rent”.
Related Articles
16 users responded in this post
Is one out of context rent reference the only explanation? thats mighty powerful.
If you study the backlinks to the Prescott page you will notice some very trusted links from sites like USNews.com.
The link at the bottom of that article from USNews sure smells like paid link! That anchor text is too good to be true! And why not put a site like mine on the bottom of the page for houses for rent in Prescott.
Because of that trusted link, Trulia could easily just have one mention of rent hidden on the page and so extremely well.
If you look at the cached version of this page in google, a link on the right side asks the question “Anyone one know of TownHomes for rent in the East Valley area of Az, Mesa, Chandler, etc safe areas,? ”
“Rent” is legitimately used there.
“…Truila doesn’t need to worry since they are a large company and probably have a person at Google they can call if they get hurt in the rankings.”
Google doesn’t do this.
They can’t go in and correct the rankings because some company gets upset. Any company can get blacklisted. I don’t know what experience or evidence you have that would lead you to that sort of statement.
They may have “a person at Google they can call” but there’s not a lot that person can do… other than tell them why they may have gotten dropped.
Google’s whole premise is based around rankings based on their algorithms. If Google bowed to every company that wasn’t happy with their rankings, what would be the point? They’d just be advertisers and searchers would have no confidence that they are being served unbiased listings.
Pavement,
Thanks for bring up that excellent question.
Here is your answer of a site that was cloaking and then quickly allowed back in because of their brand size:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003257.html
Some refer that as a hand-job (hand edit the algo).
Pavement, since you are not using your real name I will guess you are a competitor of mine. Thanks for reading my blog – I enjoy the conversation. If you are a competitor I can bet that Trulia is out ranking your site for Prescott as well.
Uh, what? I don’t see how not using my real name makes me a competitor.
And I’ve never even heard of Prescott, Arizona before someone forwarded me another one of these posts. But I’m sure there are some real nice folk there and it’s a lovely town.
Pavement,
Typically people that do not use their real names on this blog work for my competition.
I know this because they mostly comment from work or the place where their client is.
It is OK that you don’t use your real name, I enjoy the banter.
Hi Dave!
“Are they doing this on purpose? No, I don’t think so, they are trying to give the user a nice experience by not messing up the page. Google looks at intent – and I don’t think they are intentionally doing this to get people looking for rentals on their site but I am sure they get a ton of traffic because of it.”
What you are referring to is a javascript pop-up. It’s there because there is way too much text on the page. We do not get tons of traffic from this at all. As you know, we do not have rentals on Trulia so the rental traffic is negligible.
Hope this clears it up.
Thanks,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com
Hey Rudy thanks for stopping by.
I would have to respectfully disagree with you, I think you are getting a ton of long tail traffic for the rental space.
By a ton, I mean a ton as it refers to my traffic levels – for Trulia that gets 6 million visits a month it is nothing however.
Do you think it is a little unfair that you rank so well for the rental space without even trying?
I know this is really Google’s issue. Google need to fix this so Trulia does not show up in the rental SERPS since it provides a poor user experience for Google visitors and Trulia visitors.
I gotta say that Yahoo has this done right since I am ranked #1 for this phrase and Trulia is not even in the rankings.
Hi Dave!
We get a small amount of traffic from rental queries, it represents approx 0.04% of our traffic. I’m pretty sure Google will figure out that there are much better sites online for rentals
However, we do get lots of traffic from people asking rental related questions on Trulia Voices, our thriving real estate community. And lastly, we do not have a direct line to the Google search team.
Have a wonderful night.
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com
Rudy,
.04% of your 6 million is 24,000.
I gotta think 24,000 people going to a site without rentals makes Google look bad.
Hi Dave!
Um, 0.04% of 6,000,000 = 2,400
Thanks,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com
oops! you are right 2,400.
But I think if you are ranking that well for so many long tail rental phrases that your .o4% number seems really low.
I just want 0.000000001% of the traffic
HE! HE!
[...] an Agent’s profile. But this did cause an uproar in RE.net. In May, they were also accused of Hidden Text, although to be fair, it was simply a usability issue and not an attempt to trick the search [...]