Special offer

Spam prevention
Rainmaker
921,504
Annette Lawrence , Palm Harbor, FL 727-420-4041
ReMax Realtec Group - Palm Harbor, FL
Making FLORIDA Real Estate EZ

The result would be TWO q&a portals for Trulia to manage.

If you want to resond to the public, go to Trulia.

Want to keep your comments away from lost Zillowites who will inject conspiracy in eveything you present then stay on AR.

If I were managing the enterprise I would keep them seperate. Be aware, on Trulia your questions and answers are confined to your market area and only with some cleaver clicking can you access 'all locations.'

Jan 06, 2015 12:31 AM
Rainmaker
2,224,473
Debbie Laity
Cedaredge Land Company - Cedaredge, CO
Your Real Estate Resource for Delta County, CO

I would like to see the AR question and answer section go away. I think there are too many questions posted that aren't good quality content and people are just gaming the sytem. 

Jan 06, 2015 01:03 PM
Rainmaker
4,319,419
Praful Thakkar
LAER Realty Partners - Andover, MA
Andover, MA: Andover Luxury Homes For Sale

I like the way it is here on ActiveRain, John DL Arendsen .

Jan 06, 2015 11:48 AM
Rainmaker
1,622,432
Inna Ivchenko
Barcode Properties - Encino, CA
Realtor® • GRI • HAFA • PSC Calabasas CA

To tell you the truth, I've never seen a comment or question that came not  from a AR member........I like Trulia A&Q.

Jan 06, 2015 11:40 AM
Rainmaker
3,416,038
Scott Godzyk
Godzyk Real Estate Services - Manchester, NH
One of the Manchester NH's area Leading Agents

John I think with new management and a new caring towards removing the spam on Trulia, then perhaps actually listening to the agents that provide much of their content, it could be a good site again. It has a good following although consumers are running from it now becuase of the spam. Even through all that i still enjoy finding consumer sthat need help and offering a thoughtful and helpful answer. 

Jan 06, 2015 09:46 AM
Rainmaker
4,800,082
Gabe Sanders
Real Estate of Florida specializing in Martin County Residential Homes, Condos and Land Sales - Stuart, FL
Stuart Florida Real Estate

John DL Arendsen - I doubt that points would lure the general public to this section.  

Jan 06, 2015 07:31 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Gabe Sanders Once again it was due to lack of incentive and motivation because there was not point value awarded for participation and AR is a point driven platform.

Jan 06, 2015 06:54 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Debbie Gartner If they are indeed leaving the Trulia Q/A platform in tact I wholeheartedly agree with you about not duplicating it. I've actually been in touch with Trulia support on this matter and they informed me that they would be leaving it in place and are trying to fix a lot of its problems. If that happens I'm with you.

Jan 06, 2015 03:17 AM
Rainmaker
4,434,127
Gita Bantwal
RE/MAX Centre Realtors - Warwick, PA
REALTOR,ABR,CRS,SRES,GRI - Bucks County & Philadel

I prefer to have Active rain Q and A just for members and trulia should continue the public forum.

Jan 06, 2015 01:58 AM
Rainmaker
4,434,127
Gita Bantwal
RE/MAX Centre Realtors - Warwick, PA
REALTOR,ABR,CRS,SRES,GRI - Bucks County & Philadel

I think they are doing this to prevent spam. 

Jan 06, 2015 12:23 AM
Ambassador
6,393,154
Bob Crane
Woodland Management Service / Woodland Real Estate, KW Diversified - Stevens Point, WI
Forestland Experts! 715-204-9671

We used to have one of those types of sites, it did not work out very well.

Sep 02, 2019 11:12 PM
Rainmaker
4,319,419
Praful Thakkar
LAER Realty Partners - Andover, MA
Andover, MA: Andover Luxury Homes For Sale

John DL Arendsen - the way this Q&A section is set up on AR. Some questions can be public - however questions related to community should be posted for Member only.

The consumer may not know what is ActiveRain Meetup - so if the questions is about AR Meetup - no need to make it public - make it Member Only.

Jan 07, 2015 02:01 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Debbie Laity 

If this is all it's ever going to be then I couldn't agree more. It really doesn't accomplish anymore than asking the same question on a blog post would provide. But once again if they could figure out how to emulate Trulia's Q/A platform and T should decide to abandon their's then AR would be the only game in town and I think it could be a great forum speaking from years of experience on both platforms.

Jan 06, 2015 11:43 PM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Praful Thakkar As do I but what exactly do you mean?

Jan 06, 2015 11:40 PM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Inna Ivchenko Thanks for stopping by.

Jan 06, 2015 11:39 PM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Scott Godzyk Trulia established a wonderful precident when they first started their Q/A forum. In fact I liked it much better than their blog which seemed to have been filled with self serving, self angrandizement crap for the most part. 

The combination of that and the AR blog was a great blend for me and really helped me build a solid identiy in the RE community. I'm still holding out for a redo, however, now that they have some real leadership and know how from AR. 

Jan 06, 2015 11:38 PM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Scott Godzyk Many thanks for your acknowledgement as to the real substance that once existed on that platform. Hope it can come back sometime.

Jan 06, 2015 09:40 AM
Rainmaker
3,416,038
Scott Godzyk
Godzyk Real Estate Services - Manchester, NH
One of the Manchester NH's area Leading Agents

John I am so with you, I loved Trulia's and Q and A until they let it go to the spammers and just stopped working in any sort of a quick manner to remove them. Q and A over there was a great source of leads from answering with honest and helpful answers leaving out teh self promotion. Consumers can see through that. The question know is what will they do with q and a?

Jan 06, 2015 09:36 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Gabe Sanders  

You're missing my POINT. This has nothing to do with the "GENERAL PUBLIC".  That's a separate issue altogether. My point was that the reason AR member never really resonated with the AR Q/A forum was because it wasn't POINT DRIVEN. Hope that helps.

Jan 06, 2015 08:50 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Ron & Alexandra Seigel Spot on about the AR Q/A. Until they added point value it was DOA.

Jan 06, 2015 06:53 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Debbie Gartner au contraire. T new that AR was coming with Market Leader. I won't be so bold as to assume it was the motivating factor but they realized the punch the AR blog has in the RE Professional realm.

Jan 06, 2015 06:52 AM
Rainmaker
4,800,082
Gabe Sanders
Real Estate of Florida specializing in Martin County Residential Homes, Condos and Land Sales - Stuart, FL
Stuart Florida Real Estate

Yes, I think that could be a good idea.  Though there was never very much public participation in the old Questions section.

Jan 06, 2015 06:48 AM
Rainmaker
5,772,575
Ron and Alexandra Seigel
Napa Consultants - Carpinteria, CA
Luxury Real Estate Branding, Marketing & Strategy

My experience with the former Q & A on AR were inane questions, or questions that require legal expertise...and of course some spam. 

Jan 06, 2015 03:50 AM
Rainmaker
2,817,671
Debbie Gartner
The Flooring Girl - White Plains, NY
The Flooring Girl & Blog Stylist -Dynamo Marketers

I'm glad to hear Trulia is leaving in place and looking to address spam.

Also, I don't think AR was the main focus for T.  They bough market leader and AR was an afterthought (although I do agree there is a lot of potential synergy).

Jan 06, 2015 03:46 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Gita Bantwal If they can fix the T Q/A I couldn't agree more.

Jan 06, 2015 03:18 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Debbie Gartner YOu're probably right about not building on my own site. However, that wasn't as important than recieving so many qualified leads that converted to business for our companies over the years. 

Sadly, I must agree that the T Q/A did become terribly contaminated with way too much SPAM and inappropriateness towards the end and is still struggling today.

That's why I thouht in may have been part of the reason T acquired AR. But if there's really no way to aviod SPAM then I would agree that opening up an uncontaminated forum may not be wise at this time.  

Nonetheless I sure wish they'd figure it out because it really helped our businesses a bunch during these past few years and allowed us to rise to the top as credible authorities in our particular niche in the real estate industry.

Jan 06, 2015 03:15 AM
Rainmaker
2,817,671
Debbie Gartner
The Flooring Girl - White Plains, NY
The Flooring Girl & Blog Stylist -Dynamo Marketers

BTW, I really agree w/ Annette's answer above.

Are they removing Trulia Q&A?  If it is staying, it really seems like AR is better off leaving this as is, as it would be duplicative here and most likely lower quality than theirs (due to the traffic patterns).

Jan 06, 2015 01:45 AM
Rainmaker
2,817,671
Debbie Gartner
The Flooring Girl - White Plains, NY
The Flooring Girl & Blog Stylist -Dynamo Marketers

Personally, I think it's much better this way.  There was way too much spam before and a complete waste of time.  And, most the q's that did come on here rather pointless w/ little to no info.

In terms of SEO, on Trulia, the links are no follow so it did little to nothing for the SEO of your own site.  If the q's came up on search I suppose it could help you a tad, but no I would not want my well though out FAQ's on my site to come up on here 1st.  There were a few items that would come up on Zillow (and maybe one for Trulia) in my category, so I responded w/ links to my site.  I then got some steady traffic there.  But, it showed me I needed to be better on my site, so I did more backlinks and outrank them for some of those.

Jan 06, 2015 01:41 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Annette Lawrence, We both know what a sorry state the T Q/A forum is in. They're not even giving notifications any longer and you have to spend a lot of good time just figuring out how to chase your comments and questions. 

Please enlighten me on the cleaver clicking techniques available for accessing all locations.

Jan 06, 2015 01:34 AM
Ambassador
734,952
John DL Arendsen
CREST "BACKYARD' HOMES, ON THE LEVEL General & Manufactured Home Contractor, TAG Real Estate Sales & Investments - Leucadia, CA
Crest Backyard Homes "ADU" dealer & RE Developer

Gita Bantwal 

I get that. I was just hoping that AR could figure out how to deal with the SPAM. I was thinking that perhaps the biggest reasong T acquired AR was to extrapolate all their good qualities and incorporate them into the T Q/A forum. This could still happen.

Jan 06, 2015 01:32 AM