Bramblog

We’re implementing GA Event Tracking.  Presently, we’re concerned with the following events:

• Registration/Login Window Pop Up
• User registration
• “More Search Fields” implementation
• Search field utilization

Because we will track the light window pop up along with user registration, we will be able to see our bounce rate at that specific instance.  So, tweaking the registration/login light window will become a point of interest.

Because we’re tracking search field utilization, we will be able to see the most popular features on the search.  This should provide insight to improve the search app.

I posted an entry on Bloodhound Blog that turned into a gigantic sh*tfit.  My statement was pretty simple: We’ve done a lot of A/B testing, and forced registration produces many more leads and results in more closed transactions than open registration.  Pretty simple concept.  I invited people to offer data to the contrary.

As Russell Shaw pointed out, it turned into a near religious argument (Bob Wilson summarized well in a comment, as well.)  But enough of the whole milieu.

During the course of the conversation/argument, I visited a lot of real estate sites.  This is good practice for me, as I run 5 broad & niche term sites & I’m always looking for new ideas.  Something struck me on many of the sites…

People don’t like to read. Why do you think television is so popular?  Hulu?  Youtube?  Most users like to passively watch video or look at pictures.

Many agent sites are heavily text based – some going so far as to make their blog their home page.  Many had “tutorials” you had to click through before you hit their IDX search.  Here’s a hint:

Put down the ego pipe and give your users what they want.

What do they want?  Funny enough…most people go online searching for real estate to find listings.  People want listings with lots of pictures.  An easy way to contact you if they want more information.  *Maybe* market stats (for when they get really serious.)  Interest rates.  Prospective mortgage payments.

If you got into real estate to publish books, rethink your business strategy.  If you’re in real estate, like it or not, you’re in the business of selling houses.  You sell by giving your buyers what they want.

$1 for 5 minute block to check browser compatibility.  Check it out!  www.crossbrowsertesting.com

It hasn’t propagated my datacenter yet, but Eric Blackwell shot me an IM and gave me some updates on some of our newer sites.

Here’s what Matt Cutts had to say:

I just commented on a blog about the subject, but didn’t have the complete data.  I ran it, and was surprised to see that people are searching for roost as much as trulia.  ***edit*** roost is an actual word…that’s why it’s searched

This news is a couple of days old, but it’s very pertinent.  I spent about an hour last night cross referencing what the Adwords Keyword Selector reported vs. what I have personally seen in traffic from ranking sites.  The data looks strong to quite strong.

I’m really loving this…Overture was okay and free, and then went down.  Wordtracker is okay and costs, but for the last year was really our only option.  The new Google data looks like it’s way better than either of those options, and free.

Alright, I’m relatively new to woot, so forgive me if this has been done before.  This item is awesome.  I only wish that I’d had a chance to buy it before it was sold out.

Title pretty much sums it up.  I checked http://seattleweekly.trulia.com/WA/Seattle/ for the user agent cloak, and it’s no longer there.  I checked for an IP cloak using the Google translator, and didn’t see one.  If they are using a good IP cloak, we wouldn’t be able to see it on the translator.  There is a possibility that they still have an IP cloak up, but it would take some time & resources to check for it.  If I get bored, I might do so.

So…first page on sphinn looks like it will drive ~200 visitors, based on the Trulia Cloaking piece.

Be patient with this flash video. It’s big b/c I wanted everyone to be able to read the text on the screen. This is pretty cut/dry – we found a couple of cloaked redirects on Trulia’s site. It looks like they’re doing it simply to pump the PR of specific pages, and to get some good sitewide one-way links.