Aggregated property marketplace Trulia has signed an agreement with New York State Multiple Listing System to ensure it can more accurately market listings and provide a better experience for users looking to buy or sell homes in New York state.

The Trulia Data Connect agreement is a direct data license that establishes a direct feed to Trulia through NY State MLS, and ensures the highest level of accuracy.  In the past, Realtor.com, National Association of Realtors and local MLSs were the leading voices of real estate, but as sites such as Trulia steadily gain consumer audience and reap the highest numbers in the industry of unique visitors each month, the Realtor family has become less exclusive.

“With our Trulia Data Connect program we are enabling MLSs and their brokers to remain in control of their listing data while providing the most accurate and timely data to Trulia’s large consumer audience of 54 million unique monthly visitors,” said Matt Flegal, senior manager of communications for Trulia.

“That’s why we continue to invest in our data processing framework and partner with the real estate industry to deliver accurate data for the benefit of our customers and partners.”

Increasing portal size
Content from Trulia consistently tops the results of a Google search for the address of active listings nationally. And while many Web developers argue that Trulia earned those rankings via back-lining campaigns and widgets, what Google ultimately mines for is pages that most closely match what the searcher inputs, and Trulia delivers that.

Trulia provides extensive pages of content that highlight property details, pictures, recent transactions, tax data, area schools, transit information and amenities.

This data is mostly public and has been collected via aggregation services such as Lender Processing Services and is similar to sets that the National Association of Realtors  licenses to supplies the Realtors Property Resource with, but Trulia is making more sizeable investments to license these types of data for public consumption, as exemplified in its Data Connect agreement.

RPR is only for NAR members.

Trulia also leverages user-generated content through Trulia Voices, blogs, ratings and recommendation pages in addition to its professional Web profiles. All platforms facilitate discussion between consumers and industry professionals to create a string of data about localized neighborhoods, market conditions and agents.

Broadening search
Real estate insiders often debate the success Trulia would have without listings, but this is only a minute factor in why the wiki ranks so well in search results.

When seeking information concerning an off-market property Trulia dominates Web results as it should. When or if the property goes on the market, little changes aside from the addition of a listing price, extra images, and maybe a short description contributed by the active agent, but all other historical information provided by Trulia remains for years and becomes updated when necessary.

For a search engine like Google, Trulia becomes a trusted and relevant source to which it can direct searchers, and outperforms the traditional real estate agent who does only temporary marketing and has no permanent ownership of information.

As Trulia continues to strengthen and add new partnerships, beating it in search results will require an aggressive and constant commitment to producing content about properties, neighborhoods and market conditions regardless of a home’s status.

“Trulia continues to innovate with new services such as Nearby Home Alerts, a one-of-a-kind feature that instantly alerts buyers and renters when they are near homes that have just hit the market, and  the industry-first mobile real estate app for Android Wear,” said Mr. Flegal.

“By working with MLSs and brokers, Trulia ensures that the highest quality home listing information will be available to consumers using these cutting edge services.”

Final Take
Michelle is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York