The ongoing battle between Zillow.com and Trulia.com continues. This battle publicly began when Trulia CEO Pete Flint told Seattle-based Journalist John Cook during a March 2011 interview. ‘Its Just a question of time before we overtake them’ when asked about rival real estate giant Zillow. If you are familiar with the online real estate community, youll understand that this battle has been going on much longer than March 2011. I am not writing this post to force my point of view on my readers or to take sides but I can tell you as a Realtor and real estate professional, I favor one over the other (as do most realtors that I speak with).

In my opinion, one has inaccurate and inflated estimates, a community of online czars that make it difficult for anyone to utilize the site to its full potential, and a forum full of questions and answers that offer no real advice. In fact, the forum posts are packed with so many silly questions and keyword-rich text, that it just seems like a ploy to bait the search engines.

The competition on the other hand (that I will not mention) is Truliaiffic in my opinion. This specific site is Realtor friendly, accurate, and I get the feeling that the staff actually cares about helping Realtors become successful. Its the perfect example of a huge company thats held onto the small business way of doing things.

So, after writing an opinionated piece as I just did, the question still remains Which online real estate giant is winning?

I can tell you that Trulia has become an acquisition target for the giant of all giants, Google. Zillow, on the other hand, gets much more traffic and has recently purchased Diverse Solutions. a California-based company that helps real estate agents build their businesses by providing feeds from local Multiple Listing Services (MLS). Sounds like their both winning, right? Not so fast Ive heard talk around the water cooler that the reason Zillow bought Diverse Solutions is because they needed an in for providing feeds from thousands of MLSs around the country. If youre anything like me, youre probably asking yourself why a company the size of Zillow would need to be so elusive about their motives.

Again, I would like to clarify that this is nothing more than my speculation. Its my opinion that Zillow needed an in with respects to Listing Syndications. Why? Because MLS data is generally so accurate and they probably arent willing to do business with a company that has a reputation for inflating data. So, with Diverse Solutions having such a big piece of the market in regards to Listing Syndications, I believe Zillow thought they could buy out Diverse Solutions and then conveniently continue to utilize the already-active contracts Diverse Solutions had with local MLSs. As it turns out, one local MLS from Denver Colorado, the Metrolist, announced that they would not be renewing their contract with leading IDX supplier Zillow DBA Diverse Solutions.

Are we about to see a trend develop here? Why else would the Metrolist suddenly cut ties with Diverse Solutions after such a long and seemingly stable relationship? I would love to hear some opinions as to which service you utilize most and why? Why does it seem that most Realtors know that Zillows estimates are extremely inflated, yet they continue to get millions of visitors everyday? Youre opinions are welcome here!