Realtor.com stays atop Hitwise rankings
Trulia, MSN Real Estate move into top 10
By Inman News, Monday, November 10, 2008.Trulia and MSN Real Estate bumped Homegain and Coldwell Banker Real Estate out of Hitwise's top 10 real estate Web site rankings in October, but Realtor.com, Yahoo Real Estate, Zillow and ZipRealty held onto their places on top of the list.
Trulia's 1.53 percent market share of traffic in the real estate category was good enough to bump it up to ninth place, up from from 11th place in September, Hitwise said. MSN Real Estate rose from 16th to 10th with a 1.52 percent market share.
First-place Realtor.com's 7.68 percent market share exceeded the combined share of second-place Yahoo Real Estate (4.11 percent) and third-place Zillow (2.55 percent).
While ZipRealty held steady in fifth place with a 2.32 percent share of traffic, Rent.com (1.82 percent) and RE/MAX Real Estate (1.74 percent) each slipped one place in the rankings, to sixth and seventh. They were displaced by ServiceMagic, which rose from seventh to fifth place with a 1.91 percent market share.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Web site, HUD.gov, also moved up one place to eighth on the top 10 list with a 1.63 percent market share.
Homegain (1.36 percent) slipped from 10th to 11th, and Coldwell Banker Real Estate (0.9 percent) slipped from eighth to 18th.
Rounding out the top 20 real estate Web sites were Apartments.com (1.27 percent), RealtyTrac (1.22 percent), Century 21 Real Estate (1.17 percent), Homes.com (1.16 percent), MyNewPlace (0.96 percent), Foreclosure.com (0.9 percent), VisualTour.com (0.89 percent) and Move.com (0.83 percent).
Real estate Web sites entering the top 100 were HomeForeclosureFighter, Del Webb Active Adult Communities, Pulte Homes, listings.listhub.net, RealtyUSA, Curbed, Bid4assets, and Socialserve.com.
Leaving the top 100 list were Vacation Property Resales, Mercury News -- Property Details, Harry Norman Realtors, Inman News, My Realtor, ForeclosureToGo.com, Lands of America, and LivingChoices.com.
The top 10 real estate search terms were realtor.com, remax, zillow, coldwell banker, real estate, zillow.com, century 21, realtor, apartments and apartments for rent.
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Submitted by Keith Byrd on November 10, 2008 - 2:11pm.
Too bad no one tracks local IDX sites. I bet that there would be a different top 10 if you looked at the top websites people used to search real estate in a particular area.
Submitted by Robert A. Hulme on November 10, 2008 - 2:18pm.
No surprises there, everyone uses Realtor.com today in the Real Estate market. I am happy to see Trulia moving up, I think their site is very helpful and useful to the consumer and Realtor alike. ZipRealty is only moving because of energetic marketers trying to promote their Brokerage, but it certainly seems to be working for them.
Robert A. Hulme
Realtor, GRI, e-PRO
Prudential Utah Real Estate
robert@RobertHulme.com
www.UtahCountyRealEstate.us
www.UtahCountyHomes.ws
Blog : www.UtahHomes.ws
801-885-2586
Submitted by Anne Hensel on November 10, 2008 - 3:13pm.
I will never understand the Realtor.com thing.
Why do so many people use it?
I do not think that is is very user friendly nor does it give you a lot of information, the interation with clients is next to nothing, their blof site in not very active and the list goes on. What is the attraction to Realtor.com?
Anne Hensel
Broker, ABR, E-PRO, C-CREC, ASR, AHS, TRC, RECS
South Beaches Real Estate Professionals
727 409 8706 www.Southbeaches.info
Submitted by JOHN HOLST on November 10, 2008 - 3:38pm.
Very helpful infrmation from Hitwise.com.
Now is the time for Brokers to decide your web 2009 marketing plan, I highly recommend going to COMPETE.COM to compare the internet site analytics for free testing three real estate websites under consideration at a time.
Armed with this information, you can negotiate with your marketing dollars dedicated to a particular site. Brokers must also track the closings resulting from the web source to see if your local performance otherwise justifies your hard-earned dollars being spent to seek leads.
Site analytics and search analytics are not just for geeks anymore, you must understand the stats behind the web use by your prospective clients.
John C. Holst
Exclusive Buyer's Broker
MetroStar®, Realtors® of Chesterfield, Missouri
www.MetroStarUSA.com
Holst.JC@gmail.com
Submitted by Keith Byrd on November 10, 2008 - 4:31pm.
A comment about Trulia and Realtor.com being useful to a Realtor.
While both provide exposure for a listing, they both don't help the Listing Agent/Broker with a link to the agent's website that helps with Search Engines.
Both use a "no follow" html tag with the link to an agent's website (Realtor.com only provides a link if you enhance a listing). What the "no follow" tag tells search engines is to not count that external link.
Other sites where you can put a listing (like Craigslist) don't use the "no follow" tag so it can help the agent/broker's site.
You can find out if a site uses the no follow tag by choosing to View Source in the Browser and search for "nofollow" to see if the site uses that attribute for links.
Submitted by Mike Parker on November 10, 2008 - 4:51pm.
Mike Parker
mparker@theblackwatercg.com
Myth: The most popular place consumers look for homes online is REALTOR.COM®
Fact: The most popular place consumers look for homes online is Google®!
REALTOR.COM is the website owned by Move, Inc. and licensed by NAR to be their only authorized website(s). They claim to be the most popular Internet shopping site for homes. With 7 million page views monthly, REALTOR.COM claims to own the largest market share of Internet home buyers. The fact, however, is that Google has 65% of all search traffic and 85 billion searches a month, of which an estimated 13% are real-estate related. Google receives about 870 million real estate searches a month. Clearly, the most popular place for Internet buyers to look for homes online is Google! You need to tap in to Google and other major search engines.
Anne, you are correct: few but agents and brokers go to realtor.com to look for a home.
Submitted by Joseph Ballarino on November 11, 2008 - 6:17am.
Couldn't agree more Mike. If all the brokers, agents and sellers with listings stopped visiting the site, their rating would fall dramatically.
Real estate is local and more traffic is garnered by local searches and visits to known area company sites.
Joe Ballarino
Amerivest Realty
Naples Florida & Bonita Springs Florida
Submitted by Warren Lee on November 11, 2008 - 10:12am.
Mike, I agree that Google has the leading share of internet traffic, in fact last I heard they had upped to 72% of all search traffic, however if you 'Google' some of the top ten most highly searched keywords for the real estate industry according to the Hitwise report above, usually www.realtor.com will be first page if not in the number one spot. Considering that Google has so much internet traffic this is another reason why Realtor.com is a popular place for consumers to search for a home because the home search experience is still better on Realtor.com than on Google.com and Realtor.com has top SEO rankings for the most searched keywords.