Zillow Gains VC and Google SEO Goodness
Zillow.com has secured a fresh round of money, the venture capital kind: $87 million to date in VC backing.
Meanwhile, new hire Vanessa Fox has undoubetdly been showing Zillow some SEO gains, Google style.
Fox is Product team Lead at Zillow, ostensibly in charge of the site’s local advertising and email marketing offerings for real estate professionals and independent home buyers and sellers. Nevertheless, she continues to publicly speak on SEO tactics and optimization, sharing tips and tricks for making sure content “ranks well” in search results, an old Google habit.
Fox is a veteran of Google Webmaster Central where she was a “tool builder” for the “Google Index.”
In June, I headlined: Zillow Gets Google Webmaster (secrets?) when Fox announced her departure from Google for Zillow, the lucky new employer.
At the time, Fox was said to be looking forward to the “unique challenges of the vertical and local search space,” at Zillow.
I predicted that Zillow would shoot up in Google SERP rankings shortly after Ms. Fox became a Zillower rather than a Googler, noting Zillow may be “Your edge in real estate, ” BUT ex Google Webmaster Fox will be Zillow’s edge in Google SEO “goodness.”
Has Zillow indeed already benefitted from foxy Google “secrets?” Even if Fox is bound by a non-disclosure, her innate Google “index” knowledge can not be locked up. It is inevitable that Zillow has profited from her insider knowledge of Google’s inner Webmaster sanctum.
Zillow IS ranking nicely at Google for the terms it sells itself on, while coldwellbanker.com and homegain.com are buying AdWords for top spots:
Number 1 for “home values”
Number 1 for “real estate edge”
Number 3 for “real estate guide”
There is no place like home for Zillow? There is no place like a good Google SERP ranking, as Vanessa Fox knows.
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