Lots of talk yesterday about Trulia’s recent drop in the SERPs. When digging around, I ended up finding a hacked WP install on Trulia’s hindsight subdomain with maliciously inserted links, and immediately attributed the drop to this:
“It will take a reinclusion request (which I’m sure they’ve submitted,) and they should be reindexed within the week.”
Man I’m confident! And that, dear friends, is why you shouldn’t automatically believe someone who is merely confident.
After identifying the hack, Brad Carroll correctly pointed out that, historically, sites in this situation only have the offending subdomain de-indexed/penalized. This means that only hindsight.trulia.com would have dropped off Google’s radar, leaving the rest of the site intact – if it were the hacked site/inserted links causing the problem.
Rudy swung by, and dropped a comment:
What indicates that Trulia has been penalized is that a specific nomenclature of pages have been entirely de-indexed from Google. Google doesn’t tell webmasters when they’ve been penalized, they simply pull the offending site/pages out of the index. So, de-indexed site/pages = penalty (unless you have on-site problems.)
It’s easy to see which pages Trulia promotes for city specific real estate terms. If you scroll to the bottom of trulia.com, you find:
If you follow some of those links, you end up at the following pages:
- http://www.trulia.com/TX/Austin/
- http://www.trulia.com/CA/Los_Angeles/
- http://www.trulia.com/FL/Miami/
- http://www.trulia.com/NV/Las_Vegas/
If you notice, Trulia uses a naming stratey that follows http://www.trulia.com/ST/city_name (which is good webmastering.)
These are the pages that used to rank, and it is specifically these city pages that have been removed from Google’s index.
Here are a few searches I ran to verify this (using Austin as an example):
As you can see, the page that Trulia promotes, and that should rank for those searches, is nowhere to be found.
One interesting observation is that Trulia doesn’t seem to have been penalized in every market. Wayne Long optimizes for Columbus GA real estate and follows those SERPs pretty religiously. He emailed me to tell me that Trulia is still showing page 2 for that term. I ran the search, and sure enough, at the bottom of page 2:
But if you look at the URL, it’s not the naming structure that has been de-indexed/penalized. Trulia promotes http://www.trulia.com/GA/Columbus/, and as you can see, that page has been de-indexed. So, it appears that Trulia has been de-indexed/penalized in every market.
It wouldn’t be a big surprise if they were penalized. As Brad pointed out yesterday, Blackwell points out today, and I’ve pointed out in the past, Trulia doesn’t always respect the Google Webmaster Guidelines, and sometimes don’t cover their tracks well. However, this isn’t the nail in the coffin that they’re penalized. They could have caused this themselves, if there were serious on-site problems. Other than that, (or unnecessary cloaked redirects,) I don’t know what could explain this.
As always, I’m interested to hear other theories!
Hey Eric:
Trulia is missing from Fort Lauderdale real estate as well.
I was wondering what happened to Trulia. I noticed that they disappeared from the rankings they once had for Bend real estate. Great for all of us who choose to do it on our own!
Wow, Trulia is also taking a beating in Atlanta too. I’m sure they will fix the problem and be back in the saddle soon.
It could possibly be Trulia’s deceptive cloaking that they were pulling with all of their newspapers. If you browse as a general consumer the URL remains on the newspaper’s domain when you clicked real estate but if you became “GoogleBot” you would see Trulia’s domain instead. They have since seemed to change it so that everyone sees the same thing but it’s now subdomain.trulia.com with the same content as on Trulia’s main site under a separate domain. For example:
http://www.trulia.com/WA/Seattle/
and http://seattleweekly.trulia.com/WA/Seattle/
While Trulia has dropped from most of the SERPs at the city level, we’ve noticed significant improvement in our traffic from Google and now in most cases rank #1.
The odd thing is most of these pages actually have a PR.
Not taking a beating here in Norther New Jersey. Then I don’t think they try real hard for these markets as they are all highly local. Could it be that Google finally got around to looking at exactly what Trulia has been doing and the hack was just the thing that drew the googs attention
Perhaps their aggressive widget strategy is to blame! We all know that they distribute widgets like crazy to Realtors and those widgets all have embedded text back links and those text links all say the same thing “city_name real estate” as anchor text and link to the city pages in question (e.x. trulia.com/ca/san-francisco). These widgets have been the backbone of their city pages link building strategy.
Is it just coincidence that the affected phrases are those on the widgets and the affected pages are the widget landing pages that those links resolve to? Me thinks not…
All it takes is Google to tweak its algo to put less weight on these links since they are clearly unnatural in growth and profile. It is highly unlikely that nearly all websites linking to another website would use the exact same high profile phrase as anchor text.
Of course, Trulia changes things up by making the Realtor input their location at time of widget download and dynamically generating the text link. None the less, when many Realtors are located in the major cities, it isn’t surprising that those cities are the ones being hit. Major cities are going to have the most unnatural link patterns and are going to stand out the most. And in areas where they haven’t aggressively promoted, they have been less affected.
Hey Jonathan –
Thanks for your comment. I agree that the widgetbait campaign could be devalued, but this looks like a manual penalty. The pages have been completely pulled from the index. Google will typically devalue links from widget campaigns they think are manipulative, but I’ve only seen penalties in extreme cases. Personally, I think they were up to something else and got slapped!
Eric,
Yes, you are right, many of Trulia’s city pages have been removed from the index completely from what I can see… So, they aren’t just being devalued but are being penalized.
Still could be the widget strategy and some manual intervention. I guess the aggressive and totally self serving use of can’t be it either… So, you are thinking some super stealthy cloaking or something similar is to blame? Looks like it.
Funny thing is, I did find at least one city page that is still in the index and showing up for a site:trulia.com/tx/dallas whereas the San Francisco equivalent is not! But the Dallas city page still isn’t in the top 100 for “dallas real estate”.
I bet they are all back within a week. If this was you or I, we’d be toast but for Trulia, this will be just a minor setback, a slap on the wrist or a shot across the bow, if you will… The saga continues.
sorry, I was referring to the aggressive use of no follow tags and your blog ripped it out because I added
I know they’re fans of cloaking, and probably learned how to do it properly (IP) after the UA debacle. It could be new cloaking, or the many (highly potentially) paid links that Blackwell was able to dig up.
If it’s a penalty (which it smells like,) then the course of action is to come COMPLETELY clean w/ Google on a reinclusion request. You’re right that they will get priority b/c they’re a B level brand, so they could come back w/in a few weeks, if the request is filed properly.
Hi Eric!
We’re still looking into it but are very confident it’s a technical issue and not a penalty. Will keep you in the loop….
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia
Eric,
You have been a ridiculously biased anti-Trulia crusader there is for quite some time now. Now you’re getting to the point where you’re cherry picking evidence to convince yourselves of things that simply aren’t true. I know you like to throw giant hissy fits over Trulia’s SEO strategies from time to time, but the bottom line is that everything Trulia does is perfectly legal by Google’s rules.
Some searches you can do:
“Miami real estate” – Trulia #1
“Los Angeles real estate” – Trulia #1
“New york real estate” – Trulia #6
Now there are definitely some cities where Trulia doesn’t do this well, but to make some bogus claim that they are getting penalized is ridiculous. You can’t come up #1 in a valuable search term like “Los Angeles real estate” if you’re getting penalized for bad behavior. You listed Miami as one of your example URLs in your post, so surely you know that Trulia comes up #1 in that market. To not even mention this is totally disingenuous, especially when it disproves your entire claim.
Hi LAW –
Thanks for stopping by. Next time, please feel free to use your name and a real email address. I welcome all opinions here, so there’s really no reason to comment anonymously.
Thanks for pointing out that Trulia has regained their SERP positions. As I said in my blog post, major (and B level) brands are often able to correct Google penalties much faster than local, Mom & Pop shops are able to.
The search engine placement you’re identifying in your comment was not there when I wrote the original post. So, congrats to Trulia for correcting their practices that were against the Google TOS.
Again, thanks for stopping by, and please, feel free to comment with your actual name & email address next time.
Eric,
Like I said, “they’ll be back within the week”… Any additional thoughts/theories now that we have seen the penalty removed within 4 days?
And couldn’t agree with you more about anonymous commenters. Clearly, they must have an agenda or something to hide…
I’ll say it more clearly even though I thought I made it obvious last time: Trulia did not receive a Google penalty. Anyone who follows SEO knows that Google drops results from time to time. Indexing the entire internet is not a simple task, and issues pop up from time to time which need to be corrected. You make it sound like Trulia has a direct line to Google’s search team and they just order Google around. Hate to burst your bubble, but Trulia is not a big deal at all as far as Google is concerned. Just like anyone else, if they were actually penalized they would have to go through a lengthy review and fix their bad practices. There is just no way this happened in 4 days.
As for the anonymous thing, forgive me for not revealing my full name when I see a bunch of people throwing around nasty false accusations at anyone they don’t like. For what it’s worth, I don’t work for Trulia. I do follow their SEO strategies, which are quite good (and not illegal no matter how any realtors you convince otherwise).
Hello LAW -
I’m sorry that you don’t feel comfortable revealing your identity. I host an open forum here and welcome all opinions.
It sounds like you have a basic knowledge of SEO. Good for you. However, both of your claims are wrong.
When Google de-indexes a site, or a directory or subdomain of a site for an extended period of time (as in this case – over one week,) it is a penalty. Here’s a good article Rand Fishkin wrote on the subject. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-it-looks-like-to-be-lost-in-googles-real-estate-reciprocal-link-penalty
Your second assertion – that Google treats all sites equally – is just as incorrect. Here’s another link you can check out: http://tinyurl.com/awm3a7 Michael Gray has written quite a bit on the subject.
Again, thanks for stopping by. I hope you feel comfortable enough to let us know who you are in the future.
And just a point for other readers to notice. LAW’s IP address is out of San Francisco, which is where Trulia is based….so whatever that implies. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not.
LAW –
Here’s an example of how Google penalizes big brands:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bmw+fixes+google+penalty&btnG=Search
BMW was de-indexed for a few days, fixed the problem, and was immediately re-indexed. I’m not saying Trulia’s as big a brand as BMW (as I said – they’re a B level brand,) but they’re big enough to get special treatment from Google.
So LAW, are you saying that the ONLY reason that all of those pages dropped was simply a normal Google shuffle of the deck? That they did nothing wrong, tripped NO filters, etc?
While I think you are correct that it was not a normal 30 day or 60 day thing, I don’t think it was a simple Google shuffle of the deck either…please….
“not illegal no matter how any realtors you convince otherwise”
As to this assertion. I don’t think I have EVER read Eric Bramlett say anything of the sort. Aggressive–yes. Something that might give Google heartburn?–yes. Illegal? gimme a break.
I think that much of what Bramlett brings up here points to the fact that Trulia is a competitor to REALTORS. I think that point has been well made to the point of proof.
Best
Eric Blackwell
It is always tough for me to take anyone seriously who will not give their real name or information.
I am not sure what caused it as I am not nearly as accomplished in the SEO department as the Erics are but I do know that they disappeared in major markets and are now back. It seemed too long for just a normal Google shuffle so I think I would be inclined to listen to SEOs who know their stuff and are willing to acknowledge who they are.
What say you??
Interesting. I’ve been following this from the sidelines. Watching. LAW, this isn’t my blog, but your comments did seem somewhat hostile to me as a reader. I’ve been known to do this myself a few times – even directly mean to Rudy, I think. I apologize if that is the case Rudy. Anyway, 30 day, 60 day, whatever, this looked like a penalty, but, it doesn’t mean we would ever know why. Such is the case with Google. Often times, they can place a defined time length penalty on a website and the webmasters can correct the problem, request reinclusion and find themselves out of the penalty in much less than the length of time the penalty was originally set for so that argument is not a valid argument. Ask John Sabia who has spoken about his penalty and quick reinclusion in the past. He was definitely part of a 60 day penalty. I should know. I sat out the entire 60 days.
LAW, your arguments are not substantiated by known facts of other cases.
Has anyone heard from Rudy about this? I would love to hear if Trulia took any actions. I haven’t compared the pages, but at a quick glance, I didn’t see anything that changed. Have you noticed anything?
I almost wonder if there is some fluctuating going on because I had taken over a lot of their #1 positions and have now reverted back to where I was prior in the South Florida market and I have not made any significant site changes.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned their PPC $$$ and the way that enables you to get access to specific people when necessary. I only speak from experience from when I was at a high ranking health site whose developers made a critical mistake which greatly impacted Google’s crawling of our site. I was able to pick up the phone to my reps who were able to pass the call along to proper channels…
@Brad –
Rudy’s stopped by a couple of places and basically said it wasn’t a penalty. Unless we know what they did to correct the problem, there’s really no way we know if it was a penalty or an on-site issue.
Hi Eric!
In the last couple of days we did notice that some of our cities were getting re-indexed just as quickly as they
were de-indexed. We didn’t make any changes on our side. So, like I said before, it really looked like a technical issue and not a penalty.
Thanks to all who have chimed in over the last week.
Best,
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia
Hey Rudy –
Thanks for stopping by again! Like I said, these things are always so speculative. Personally, I have never seen Google deindex a specific naming structure of a sites’ URLs as simply a glitch, and I’ve never seen a “glitch” that deindexed a site for that long. I have seen pages (as in one page at a time) disappear for 1-2 days as a glitch, but never 5-7 days, and never multiple pages. In my experience, anything longer than 3 days means on-site problems, or a penalty.
Anyways, just going on past experience here. Congrats on the reinclusion!
Engines are always changing and it’s hard to follow up everything they do, i also had some drops in the past i did not understood why happen.
I hope that they can put a stop to this kind of malicious behavior.
I’ve seen search results in Google that warns you about the site being shown in the results, that it can hurt your computer. Why would Google display such a result as opposed to taking it out of the index altogether? Is this to give a chance for the site owners to correct things? Or is it a way to further demote a site? Wouldn’t this be against Google’s policy of ‘Do no evil’?
Thanks for any response. This is a great thread for ope discussion.