It is the duty of the entire real estate community…to guard consumers from hoaxers, con-men and frauds….If we are silent when confronted with the public’s gullibility toward the Zillow.com fraud, we are complicit in that harm. (Greg Swann, from Tell the world: Zillow.com is bunk)
We wrote the following posts during our trip to the matrix. After we came out, we debated their publication, in part because we called out a friend who, in our opinion, flip flopped on Zillow, to the consumer’s detriment. Then we found the evidence revealed in the first post you will read in this series: Has Zillow Spiked the Google Juice? Holds #1 Spot in Google & Yahoo Search for “Appraise my home”. How is that possible when Zillow.com is not an appraisal site? Has Zillow.com spiked the search engines with their “home appraisal” meta tag and other SEO secret sauce. Read and decide where you stand on Zillow.com for consumers’ sake.
Hey guys, this is outa character for you. But I do like it, and found it interesting. Lar
There are many points that I agree on:
1. The “Average Joe”, will find the Zestimates - shall I say Flattering, when they try to sell their home. With no luck, because the values are off. So to just brush off the concept behind Zillow and claim that the Consumer should have known better than believe the zestimates. Don’t pass the blame.
2.If the bottom line is that Zillow is not here to provide a substantial zestimate for your home - then really what is the point of the company then?
3.If a real estate agency using the zestimates on their site - then YES - the agency is to blame as well. You can’t have an AVM on your site and then claim that you REALLY don’t trust the Zestimates - its just there for FUN!
4. If this is really a shakedown - then I feel bad - but if this is what it took for people/consumers to see the non value behind zillow - then so be it.
5. I actually really like David G - I think it must be hard to constantly defend a company that you represent. I think he is a nice guy - but, nice guy has a product that I don’t love. Do I think that zillow can serve for something other than Zestimates - maybe. They are smart, they can figure something out.
6. As for the flip from Greg Swan - Baffling. I agree that a company can run any way that the owners see fit - Point noted - but seriously, is that the ONLY defense?
Lastly - the one point that I really want to stand out is claiming that a consumer should KNOW better - I think that is just BS. Honestly, that out of everything else just pisses me off the most.
You guys really did your homework and you did a great job -
“Has Zillow.com spiked the search engines with their ‘home appraisal’ metatag and other SEO secret sauce”
Sour grapes mixed with complete ignorance (of SEO).
markus - maybe you could explain to us how this one meta tag got them to the top? what are we missing? we’d like to learn. by the way, on “home appraisal”, they’re #4.
Wow. I mean, wow.
I’m not planning on linking to Zillow anytime soon on my site but I will admit to running addresses on properties I may be listing to see what my potential client potentially has seen. Sometimes Zillow is wrong, sometimes Zillow is right. It depends on how good their data may be for a given area.
I believe we tend to paint Zillow with a broad brush as universally incorrect but, like anything, there are no universal truths. There is no … oh, never mind.
Hey JD. We completely agree. But only human verification validates the zestimate as sometimes wrong, sometimes right. YOU see if it’s accurate based on what you know/see about a property. If a person does not validate the date, how to do measure Zillow’s usefulness, or margin of error. beforehand.
The point of this post is to question their SEO strategy. We wanted to focus on ZIllow’s message to attract consumers via the search engines.
Zillow . . . Oh, the horror!
All the feigned interest for the poor real estate consumers who have been victimized by Zillow. . .
Where is all of the righteous indignation from the real estate community regarding issues which are of real concern to consumers?
http://buyersbroker.biz/blog/2006/01/agency-disclosure-laws-largely-ignored.html
stefan - agreed. agency disclosure is a very important issue as are many others. thanks for highlighting that point.
lar - ok
christine - thanks for taking the time to read everything. love your comments.
re: “Lastly - the one point that I really want to stand out is claiming that a consumer should KNOW better - I think that is just BS. Honestly, that out of everything else just pisses me off the most” - we’re with you on that one christine.
imagine this scenario:
you’re driving your car and you come to a four way intersection. there are no signs. what do you do? everyone surely knows that you should stop and look to make sure no other cars are coming right? wrong. some people would just fly right through. that’s why they have stop signs indicating it’s a four way stop. for safety. to protect everyone.
Hi all, it’s David G from Zillow.com.
Christine - Thanks for your kind words. My job is actually easier than you’d think; I believe in what we’re doing and am fortunate to know what Zillow’s next plans are.
Regarding Zillow’s SEO strategy:
1) The way a website markets itself to search engine users is by the site description displayed in the search results. Ours is quite clear and it reads:
“Zillow.com. Designed to help people get estimates on home valuations and gather all sorts of detailed information in their quest to sell or buy property”.
2) It is simply good practice to rank in search engines for as many terms as possible that are relevant to your industry. You will note that we also include “mortgage” “loans” “fha” etc. in our hints to the search engines. The fact that Zillow is ranking well for many of our search hints is a result of the website’s popularity with consumers.
The reason they rank for all of that is not because of some nefarious scheme or SEO “secret”. It’s actually very simple. They provided something extraordinary so lots of people linked to it and refered to it as “home appraisal” in their link text or nearby copy. It’s pure link love on a massive scale. (267,000 links can’t be wrong)
The only thing the meta tag is good for is sometimes it displays in the search engine results under the link. Meta tags have little to zero value for ranking these days.
If Odysseus won’t step in, then I’ll have to defend Greg Swann’s apparent John Kerry-esque “I was against Zillow before I was for them” stance. Greg has been consistent in his criticism of Zillow’s disclaimer policy; he’s still critical of it. Where he’s jumped in to defend Zillow is wrt the recent NCRC action, which he sees as a dangerous precedent-setting “shakedown.” Granted, he often views the world through Libertarian-tinged “just leave us alone” glasses, but regardless of your personal politics, we should all be concerned about the NCRC’s action.
You can be against a company’s stance on something — or even against the company itself, as a whole, carte blanche — and at the same time defend said company against something that you also consider aggregious.
And…speaking of SEO juice…
… our friends at Sellsius have been drinking some themselves…
Do a Google search for “Zillow” and you’ll find the following:
1) Greg’s site, which apparently used to be #4, is now down to #28.
2) The top real-estate blog returned is Rain City Guide, at around #15.
3) Just behind Greg is Matrix, followed a bit later by yours truly.
4) Sellsius ain’t in the top 100! (Which I found surprising.)
Let’s re-run this search in a week or two, and see where Sellsius ranks then!
markus - “They provided something extraordinary so lots of people linked to it and refered to it as “home appraisal” in their link text or nearby copy.”
so the people that linked to zillow refer to them as providing “home appraisals”?
Kevin
Greg’s quotes are in the Zillow vs Consumers post. He clearly used words of “intent” & “fraud”, i.e That Zillow “intentionally deceives consumers” and makes “fraudulent promises” He also said consumers take it as “gospel”. This is strong language. Personally, we dont agree with it. We do NOT believe Zillow was intentionally misleading but Greg did. Now he doesn’t think Zillow is intentionally deceiving (coming around to the majority view). That’s the point. What made him change?
We ALL agree that the racial issues are absurd so we chose to focus on the “intent” to deceive consumers. Remember the NCRC complaint is not only a racial complaint (in fact it starts off with intent to deceive)—to see it solely in racial terms is incorrect. On the misleading consumers issue, if you read NCRC and pre-shakedown Greg the language is remarkably similar in arguing “intent to deceive”. Compare the language yourself. Is it not similar? Read Pinocchio Wept–it’s pure NCRC logic. If he has changed his mind on the intent to deceive, let him say so & THAT’S PERFECTLY OK. Everyone has a right to change their mind. But he hasn’t.
Re:Disclaimer.
We agree with the need for a conspicuous non-appraisal disclaimer as does Greg but our reasoning was DIFFERENT. Greg reasoned that it was necessary because Z was “intentionally deceiving” “ordinary” (his word)consumers & making “fraudulent” promises. We, on the other hand, said it was necessary, NOT because they were INTENTIONALLY deceiving consumers BUT that it was unintentional, perhaps negligent, misleading. THIS IS A BIG DIFFERENCE. Fraud to deceive requires a clear purpose to do it while unintentional or negligent misleading is NOT purposeful but may be just plain dumb as to the effect on consumers.
So the flip flop is on FRAUD. If it’s that he rethought the fraud underpinning OK fine, it was an extreme position anyway. But we dont see him as being consistent on this point.
Kevin
Re: SEO juice & rankings
Remember Zillow.com is a static website while blogs are not. As I understand it, blogs can & often do rank higher than static websites. Am I wrong on this? I am not an SEO expert. So for Zillow to be #1 for the search term “appraise my home” on both Google & Yahoo raises questions for me. I think every appraisal site and blog uses these key words much more often. (BTW on search term “home appraisal” they are #4 on Google.) While we’d love to jump on the shakedwon wagon, to do so would cause us to lose sight of the lead off part of the complaint & the question which must SOMEDAY be addressed: does zillow.com mislead consumers. That’s the point of Z-Day.
Also consider the meta tag “home appraisal”. Of course it’s not illegal but is it indicates an effort to rank high in appraisal searches. Is there more to the story or just one simple meta tag?
And what about getting in the Yahoo Directory in Real estate Appraiser section? Granted Yahoo made that call but zillow did not object. They’re partners of sorts, they could have asked Yahoo to remove them. Again, another piece that may support the misleading portion of the complaint.
It all boils down to what Greg once wrote and which we agree with: Zillow BLURS THE DISTINCTION between an appraisal and an opinion of value. No truer words were ever writ. Appraise and appraisal are “terms of art”. Zillow would erase that distinction IMO. But with Greg wearing racial blinders, his focus is off the consumer & on a business model that he once said not only misled consumers/clients but did so with INTENTIONAL FRAUD & DECEPTION(terms of art he clearly knows the meaning of). Zillow has virtually silenced him with a simple high five. Greg has not commented on what we see as his Fraud flip flop. (it’s ok with us if he changed his mind about the “intentional” underpinning but he hasn’t done it.)We hope he did not use NCRC’s racial claims as a way to back off his extremist viewpoint. His posts read a lot like NCRC without the racial claims.
Re: Greg v consumer v business model
His getting behind Zillow.com on the racial issues was noble, but easy, a no-brainer. We too think ABSENT EVIDENCE to the contrary, the claim is bogus. What idiot thinks a computer can be racially biased unless someone slips it a mickey (demographics). But WHAT IF demographics are part of the secret sauce—THAT’S not kosher. So before I raise the shakedown banner I want to see that demographics have nothing to do with anything. IMO, since the data comes from real people at the tax asssessor’s offices, they may be using their own blend of illegal sauce. By drinking of their data Zillow would unwittingly pick up those germs.
Re: Home page Disclaimer flip
see my comment above to david g. The flip is on the reasoning–from outright fraud & intentional deception (minority extremist (NCRC view?) to simply misleading only thoughtless people (mainstream view). There is a difference IMO. Ask him.