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Is Trulia A Search Engine? If Not, Why Do They Say They Are?

Published by Joseph Ferrara (2) June 3rd, 2009 in Marketing tips. Comments

trulia-certificate

The question of the day: Is Trulia a Search Engine?

I say, “Sorry, no, Trulia is not a search engine.”

But according to the Trulia* About Us page:

What is Trulia?
We are a real estate search engine that helps you find homes for sale and provides real estate information at the local level to help you make better decisions in the process. (emphasis added)

Hmm…I still don’t buy it.  Let’s ask Pete Flint, Founder and CEO.

Interestingly, when he was recently asked about being a search engine, Pete Flint dodged the question like a pile of doodo on the sidewalk and went into media sales mode.

search-engine-ques-dodged

Now, back in the day, Trulia was crawling the world wide web for listings, just like a search engine does.

Here’s a screenshot from Google’s Wayback machine, circa 2005 (click to enlarge):

trulia-2005-way-back-machine

This was confirmed by Pete Flint in the same recent interview:

crawling-early

But now Mr. Flint says they flipped the model and to avoid the “dirty data”, they get the data “straight from the brokers”.

So, perhaps Trulia just forgot to update its About us page? That would surprise me, Pete being a Stanford grad and all.

So, what’s the deal here, Trulia?  If you are not a search engine, WHY are you saying you are?

I think it’s misleading to consumers for Trulia to call itself a search engine if it isn’t.  What do you think?

[BTW, the only real estate search engine I've ever seen is Retrove.]

This post inspired by Eric Blackwell.

*Trulia is supposed to mean trust.

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  • If Trulia is a search engine, so is every website that has a search box that searches the content in its database.

    Trulia is only searching its database and not the world wide web, as far as I know. Therefore, they are not a search engine in the commonly understood sense of the word. I think this duplicity is evident in their home page, which reads only "Real estate search". Clever fellows.

    @Peter. I agree that an agent ought to build their presence and brand on their own site, if they can. If they cant, well, get it while its free because once Truzilla gets some traction, you will be paying-- ads just can't fund these sites limited to real estate traffic-- there's just not enough eyeballs to go around IMO.

    @Paula- that is an interesting point. Perhaps they get your listings from another partner's feed.

    If you want to see a real real estate search engine, visit retrove.com
  • Joseph - Maybe preparing for November's results of the NAR MLS Committee decision to allow indexing by search engines?

    I would like to know how my listings keep appearing on Trulia after I remove them? Did they go search for them; maybe that's what they mean by search engine.

    If agents would quit submitting their listings, there would be no Trulia - then they may have to become a true search engine.
  • They are an engine as it is loosely defined.
    http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/search...
    Especially the way they started scraping I mean crawling sites. However, they have morphed into more of a directory. Either way if they are an engine, I have never seen a search engine so dependent on another search engine (Google) as they are. They have an excellent understanding of their place and have done everything a site can do to grow. Like an engine they create nothing. Their site is at last look completely user generated content. I should hope the entire staff at NAR are sent Christmas gifts each year. Not a complaint I am actually jealous. And NAR should be ashamed. ~Portland Real Estate not sure what you mean Truila is a mess it is arguably the most comprehensive set of listings and additional content anywhere.
  • "The term search engine is most commonly used to refer to Web search engines, although other types of search engines exist. Web search engines attempt to index a large portion of pages on the World Wide Web."

    Now, tech folk may say yeah, we could loosely define them as a search engine BUT... the average consumer reads search engine to mean something akin to Google. IMO, Trulia is just taking advantage of the consumer's understanding of the word to garner authority & trust with them to snooker them-- it's a marketing gimmick, plain and simple.
  • This is also probably why there is not a national MLS, because it would become a convoluted unmanageable mess that didnt work the way it is supposed to. Trulia is just like that
  • You don't seem to appreciate what Trulia is doing for our industry, tell me it isn't so ...

    I caused just a little bit of a stir when I wrote about ActiveRain and Trulia (the title gives it away):

    http://webrealestatetools.com/real-estate-updat...

    Peter Toner
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