The good news: Real estate website company Zillow (Z) topped operating earnings estimates for its third quarter when it posted last quarter’s results on Wednesday.

The bad news: Z stock took a bit of a hit anyway following the Zillow earnings report, as traders were spooked by an alarming outlook for the fourth quarter. Regardless, there’s really not all that much to worry about with Z stock.

Let’s take a look past the slightly confusing news behind the weak guidance to find out why.

Zillow Earnings

When all was said and done, Zillow actually did rather well in the third quarter, posting an adjusted profit of 13 cents per share of Z stock versus estimates of only eight cents, on revenue of $88.6 million versus analyst estimates of $88 million.

Both the top line and the bottom line for the most recent quarter compared favorably to the year-ago figure. Zillow lost four cents per share in the third quarter of 2013, and drove $53.3 million in sales for the same quarter. That’s a 66% year-over-year improvement in revenue.

So What’s the Issue?

The problem for Z stock — the reason it tanked 4% on Thursday — was the result of the Zillow earnings forecast for Q4. Although Zillow doesn’t offer earnings guidance, the company does offer revenue guidance, and it projected a top line of $89 million to $90 million for the current quarter. Analysts were expecting $91 million.

While even a small shortcoming of a projected number can be a major liability in some situations, the crux of the stock’s setback may have stemmed more from a relatively confusing explanation about how and when its Q3 revenue was earned and booked.

CFO Chad Cohen explained in the Zillow earnings call:

“Inventory that would normally would’ve sold as bookings in the third quarter, we pull that inventory forward to the second-quarter. So effectively, inventory that we would’ve sold through, we sold through in the second quarter. What you saw in the third quarter are the benefits of that which is, it is, it’s impacting revenue, accelerating revenue to 87% growth, growing ARPA as we deliver that revenue in the third quarter that 349 … those dynamics put a little bit of a ceiling on the overall impressions that we have to sell.”

In other words, the third quarter’s revenue may have been abnormally high because in the second quarter they were under-selling Q3 ad impressions. But, it then turned up the proverbial sales heat for Q3 during the third quarter, leaving behind numbers that were perhaps overstating actual demand.

The so-called “pull forward” effect isn’t expected to linger into fourth quarter results, though it could make Q4 numbers look oddly weak relative to Q3’s results. The pull-forward will also create an unfairly-high bar to beat in the third quarter of 2015, although the advent of the acquisition of Trulia (TRLA) will likely obscure the comparison anyway.

Bottom Line for Z Stock

While the Zillow earnings results are and always will be important to shareholders, there’s little doubt that the bigger story at hand with Zillow is its impending union with Trulia.

When the acquisition of Trulia was first announced in June of this year, Zillow.com owned 48% of the online real estate listing market, while Trulia.com controlled 29%. Little has changed in the meantime.

Although the two competing sites certainly shared some of the same visitors before that point, combined, the paired-up company is poised to control more than three-fourths of the online listing market. And, although the united company says it will continue to operate each site separately, the two units will have the ability to cross-sell ad inventory but will also be able to synergize by sharing data.

Between monopoly-like market share and pooled resources, few competitors stand a chance against the behemoth. It’s a near-ideal situation for fans and owners of Z stock.

The deal is currently being reviewed by the FTC but is widely expected to be approved. If it is, the acquisition should be complete sometime in the first half of 2015.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.