Elizabeth Weintraub Ranks as the Best of Trulia Agent

Trulia — the homes for sale website — sent me an email this morning to congratulate this Sacramento Realtor on earning recognition as a Best of Trulia Agent, ranking in the top 1% of all agents on Trulia. This distinction is awarded based on number of reviews and sales. ?It wants me to claim my “badge” for the Best of Trulia list and put that special?code on my business website to generate more traffic to the Trulia website and less traffic to my own website, based on Google authority. I imagine lots of agents in Sacramento and elsewhere will do this very thing because they don’t know any better. Trulia is smart that way and in a few other ways, too.

For example, it put my name on a list of other agents around the country who rank in the top 1%. Let’s say you were a Sacramento home buyer who noticed that Trulia was promoting its Top 1% Trulia agents and you decided, yeah, I’d like to work with the Top 1% of all agents at Trulia. Working with a seasoned pro is likely to reduce stress and anxiety and just makes common sense. You don’t have to sort through agents if Trulia has already done that job for you.

Yet, the best you can sort by is the state. So you can find agents in California but trying to find an agent in Sacramento requires many, many clicks to figure it out. Trulia makes it very difficult to find that special agent in Sacramento. On top of this, the agents in Sacramento, for example, seem to be sorted alphabetically by first name. It doesn’t rank by reviews and sales or this Sacramento REALTOR would head the?list. So, there obviously is a system but it’s a poorly designed system if it’s meant to promote agents to Sacramento home buyers.

I suppose it is entirely possible that this special recognition is meant to look like a benefit but not actually BE a benefit.

I mean, look at the Best of Trulia Agent certificate above that Trulia awarded to me, along?with the email. It doesn’t even have a name on it. It’s blank. It’s signed by Pete Flint, good guy that he is, but no agent name. Perhaps they think nobody will notice and nobody will care and everybody will still maintain a strong, favorable impression of Trulia. Or, maybe it’s a result of committee planning, where the important parts of the meeting tend to vanish during discussions, just to keep the peace.

You can see I am not a big fan of committee planning. But I’ve got my Top 1% of all Trulia Agents, my Best of Trulia award, that nobody will ever see or care about. Not to mention, green is a good color except for when the Enlightened blow up an Ingress portal I’ve held for 38 days. And I can look on the bright side, at least Trulia isn’t trying to sell me a commemorative plaque with my name engraved for $29.99 ?. . . but wait, there is more.