Property portals: Global Top 100
From Global Edge
By Global Edge, Thursday, May 28, 2009.
Editor's note: This item is republished with permission from Global Edge Marketing Ltd. The original post can be viewed here.
All of the property-search portals in the top 20 share one of two characteristics: They are either outright market leaders or they are the main challengers in large established markets, most notably in the U.S.
Realtor.com (U.S.), Soufun.com (China), Rightmove.co.uk (U.K.), Funda.nl (Netherlands), Immobilienscout24.de (Germany), Seloger.com (France), realestate.com.au (Australia) all dominate their respective markets. Arguably, Immobilmente.com is the market leader in Italy.
Market leaders "own" their categories and are referenced naturally on the Web, which goes someway to explain their dominance. They have also been around longer and acquired links in the days when Web masters responded to link request e-mails.
I'd be willing to bet that in five years' time, there will be very few new entrants into the top 20 from portals in established markets. Dislodging market leaders is extremely difficult. It's often more efficient to set fire to a large pile of cash! The new entrants are more likely to come from China, Russia, India and perhaps South America -- large, immature markets with low Internet penetration and plenty of room for future growth.
Ranking the portals
We opted to rank the sites by the number of unique inbound links rather than the more sophisticated measure of MozRank. This is because the MozRank scores of the top portals were so similar that in many cases we were concerned how significant the results would be by using this as the main criteria. We have included both measures in the table.
| Position | Portal name | Covered Areas | Moz Rank | Unique domains | |
| 1 | Realtor.com | US | 6.82 | 18,197 | |
| 2 | Soufun.com | China | 6.16 | 15,514 | |
| 3 | Zillow.com | US | 6.3 | 11,780 | |
| 4 | Homes.com | US | 6,5 | 9,854 | |
| 5 | Immobilmente.com | Italy | 5.7 | 7,962 | |
| 6 | Funda.nl | Netherlands | 6.38 | 5,284 | |
| 7 | Focus.cn | China | 6.34 | 5,025 | |
| 8 | Trulia.com | US | 5.84 | 4,793 | |
| 9 | Move.com | US | 6.42 | 3,457 | |
| 10 | Realestate.com.au | Australia | 6.61 | 3,351 | |
| 11 | Gdeetotdom.ru | Russia | 5.29 | 3,037 | |
| 12 | EscapeArtist.com | International | 5.79 | 3,014 | |
| 13 | Immobilienscout24.de | Germany | 7.29 | 2,535 | |
| 14 | Rightmove.co.uk | UK & Overseas | 5.76 | 2,534 | |
| 15 | Immowelt.de | Germany | 6.39 | 2,394 | |
| 16 | Domain.com.au | Australia | 6.59 | 2,280 | |
| 17 | Anjuke.com | China | 5.1 | 2,009 | |
| 18 | Homegain.com | US | 6.3 | 2,007 | |
| 19 | Immonet.de | Germany | 6.08 | 1,719 | |
| 20 | TheMoveChannel.com | Overseas | 5.98 | 1,718 | |
| 21 | Seloger.com | France | 6.08 | 1,413 | |
| 22 | HomesGoFast.com | Overseas | 5.22 | 1,377 | |
| 23 | FindaProperty.com | UK & Overseas | 6.11 | 1,311 | |
| 24 | Primelocation.com | UK & Overseas | 6 | 1,150 | |
| 25 | Daft.ie | Ireland & Overseas | 5.33 | 1,121 | |
| 26 | Propertysold.ca | Canada | 6.24 | 990 | |
| 27 | Globespanproperty.com | Overseas | 5.06 | 985 | |
| 28 | Jaap.nl | Netherlands | 5.24 | 965 | |
| 29 | Propertynow.com.au | Australia | 4.51 | 892 | |
| 30 | Facilisimo.com | Spain | 6.43 | 883 | |
| 31 | Kyero.com | Spain | 5.56 | 833 | |
| 32 | Propertyfinder.com | UK & Overseas | 6.13 | 805 | |
| 33 | Property-Abroad.com | Overseas | 5.88 | 796 | |
| 34 | Hemnet.se | Sweden | 4.46 | 781 | |
| 35 | Immobel.com | US & Overseas | 4.55 | 776 | |
| 36 | Spanish-living.com | Spain | 4.62 | 768 | |
| 37 | Idealista.com | Spain | 5.29 | 766 | |
| 38 | Realtor.ca | Canada | 5.68 | 728 | |
| 39 | AMLAspain.com | Spain | 6.01 | 702 | |
| 40 | Viviun.com | Overseas | 6.01 | 683 | |
| 41 | PropertyShowrooms.com | Overseas | 4.78 | 673 | |
| 42 | Myimmoworld.de | Germany | 6.1 | 672 | |
| 43 | Propertysalespain.co.uk | Spain | 5.95 | 661 | |
| 44 | Thinkproperty.com | UK + some other | 5.1 | 654 | |
| 45 | Mondinion.com | Overseas | 5.24 | 647 | |
| 46 | Casa.it | Italy | 6.08 | 639 | |
| 47 | Estateagents123.com | UK & Overseas | 5.19 | 611 | |
| 48 | MyHome.ie | Ireland & Overseas | 5.15 | 589 | |
| 49 | Condo.com | US | 5.28 | 587 | |
| 50 | Green-Acres.com | Overseas | 5.52 | 581 | |
| 51 | Duproprio.com | Canada | 5.11 | 547 | |
| 52 | Countrylife.co.uk | UK | 4.68 | 523 | |
| 53 | Indiaproperties.com | India | 4.77 | 518 | |
| 54 | SunshineEstates.net | Overseas | 4.29 | 425 | |
| 55 | Bovision.se | Sweden | 4.22 | 492 | |
| | 56 | 1-property.ru | Russia | 4.6 | 463 |
| | 57 | Fotocasa.es | Spain | 5.58 | 462 |
| | 58 | FrenchEntree.com | France | 5.22 | 447 |
| | 59 | Idealspain.com | Spain | 4.88 | 432 |
| | 60 | Realestate.co.nz | New Zealand and Pacific Islands | 5.45 | 429 |
| | 61 | HotProperty.co.uk | UK & Overseas | 5.42 | 427 |
| | 62 | Immobilien.net | Europe | 5.4 | 424 |
| | 63 | Thinkspain.com | Spain | 5.42 | 422 |
| | 64 | EuropeanProperty.com | Overseas | 5.42 | 419 |
| | 65 | Immobilien.de | Germany | 5.57 | 407 |
| | 66 | PropertyIndex.com | UK & Overseas | 5.81 | 396 |
| | 67 | Medhead.com | Overseas | 4.12 | 389 |
| 68 | Proprietesdefrance.com | France | 5.22 | 384 | |
| 69 | Holprop.com | Overseas | 5.52 | 379 | |
| 70 | Property.com.au | Australia | 5.51 | 371 | |
| 71 | Yourkeytospain.co.uk | Spain | 5.02 | 362 | |
| 72 | French-Property.com | France | 6.43 | 358 | |
| 73 | Buscainmobiliarias.com | Mexico | 6.84 | 357 | |
| 74 | Yourestate.com.au | Australia | 6.69 | 357 | |
| 75 | Indiaproperty.com | India | 5.08 | 347 | |
| 76 | Fish4homes.com | UK | 4.57 | 336 | |
| 77 | S-immobilien.de | Germany | 4.7 | 316 | |
| 78 | Look4aproperty.com | UK & Overseas | 5.27 | 315 | |
| 79 | WorldofProperty.co.uk | Overseas | 4.03 | 315 | |
| 80 | Homesworldwide.co.uk | Overseas | 4.34 | 308 | |
| 81 | Flatmates.com.au | Australia | 4.6 | 301 | |
| 82 | Leapfrog-properties.com | France | 4.27 | 287 | |
| 83 | Realestateview.com.au | Australia | 5.22 | 286 | |
| 84 | Globrix.com | UK | 5.1 | 282 | |
| 85 | Prendicasa.it | Italy | 5.29 | 280 | |
| 86 | Myhome.com.au | Australia | 5.62 | 278 | |
| 87 | FrenchPropertyLinks.com | France | 6.42 | 276 | |
| 88 | Metroscubicos.com | Mexico | 5.84 | 274 | |
| 89 | Mybulgaria.info | Bulgaria | 5.1 | 273 | |
| 90 | Aussiehome.com | Australia (Perth and Western Australia) | 5.49 | 267 | |
| 91 | Propertyworld.com | Overseas | 5.16 | 266 | |
| 92 | HomesOverseas.co.uk | Overseas | 4.14 | 264 | |
| 93 | Property-net-spain.com | Spain | 5.37 | 263 | |
| 94 | Propertymagnate.com | Overseas | 5.27 | 257 | |
| 95 | Immobiliare.it | Italy | 5.91 | 256 | |
| 96 | KeyItaly.com | Italy | 4.9 | 250 | |
| 97 | Eurekasa.it | Italy | 5.92 | 248 | |
| 98 | Thaiproperty.com | Thailand | 4.51 | 229 | |
| 99 | Immobilier-canada.com | Canada | 4.93 | 224 | |
| 100 | HomesandProperty.co.uk | UK & Overseas | 5.52 | 208 |
Seattle-based search marketing portal SEOMoz caused controversy in November last year with the launch of a LinkScape, a tool that crawls 34 billion URLs. Your own Web site is probably in its index and is currently being used to calculate the popularity of your own site and sites that you link to.
LinkScape attempts to replicate the most important elements of Google's algorithm and then provides quantitative scores that allow you to benchmark your own site against those of your competitors. It's an ambitious project and the results are not perfect, but it's the best tool available on the Net, far better than using Yahoo Site Explorer, the next-best alternative.
Using LinkScape to rank the world's property portals
Although Global Edge has good coverage of English-language overseas portals, we often get asked by agents for recommendations on which portals they should use to target non-English-speaking markets. It's a question we've found difficult to answer, especially as we have never been able to find a definitive list of global property portals. This article is our attempt to build a list of the world's "most important" portals. Hopefully you can use it as a starting point for researching marketing opportunities in a variety of overseas markets.
Methodology
Our first step was to ask our multilingual team to compile a long list of more than 200 property portals from across the globe. The list is inevitably biased towards the language skills of the team. We have native English, French, German, Spanish and Russian speakers. Our Chinese and Japanese left a lot to be desired, but we did try!
Secondly, we excluded large classified sites like Oodle and Yahoo to ensure we were comparing like with like. Finally, we ran each portal through the SEOmoz LinkScape Tool to see which portals were the best referenced on the Internet. To do this we looked at two metrics:
- Number of unique inbound links at each portal. To use a public relations analogy, this is equivalent to measuring the number of newspapers the portal has ever been mentioned in.
- MozRank domain score, which evaluates not only the number of links but the importance of those links. To continue the analogy, this is equivalent to weighting mentions in the New York Times higher than mentions in a small local newspaper.
Anomalies
The biggest problem with the methodology is that each link is counted equally. Companies with lots of low-quality links could theoretically appear much higher in the rankings and therefore appear stronger than they actually are on the search engines. This appears to be the case with immobilmente.com which is listed fourth in the table. Its MozRank score is much lower than the surrounding portals, suggesting it is not as powerful as the rankings suggest.
Copyright © 2009 Global Edge Marketing Ltd.
All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.
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Submitted by Joe Loomer on May 28, 2009 - 10:45am.
Sure hope Realtor.com isn't "scraping" to get this type of ranking!
Augusta GA Homes
Joe Loomer (USN Ret.)
Associate Leadership Council, Growth Chair
Keller Williams Realty Augusta Partners
www.augustalistingexpert.com
jloomer@kw.com
direct: 706-627-2650
Submitted by Doug Francis on May 28, 2009 - 1:44pm.
A very interesting report. But I have noticed that when someone starts looking in a geographic area like mine in Northern Virginia, they find local sites that serve the consumer better. And the truth is in the print-outs that I see them bring into my open-houses.
Initial searches maybe this is accurate, but then they are drawn away down a local market channel.
Doug Francis
RE/MAX Presidential in Fairfax, Virginia
http://dougfrancishomes.com
Submitted by Bill Fooks on May 29, 2009 - 2:49am.
Bill Fooks
TFT realty Marketing Service
Warwick, RI http://www.fooksteam.com
Most consumers start with the broadest search, and I am sure this is what they look at. Then they break it down to there area, and the next best search vehicle. It helps to keep your site and area up to date with the newest things and currnet market info.
Submitted by Robert A. Hulme on May 31, 2009 - 6:31am.
Local search portals seem to be much more effective for my conversion rate. There may be a lot of unique inbound links into these portals and they rank much higher than their competitors, but how effective are they really?
Robert A. Hulme
Realtor, GRI, e-PRO
Prudential Utah Real Estate
Loan Officer
Mortgage Xpress
www.DavisCountyRealEstate.us
www.WeberCountyRealEstate.ws
Submitted by Sal Antsipenka on May 31, 2009 - 10:40am.
I am affiliated with a number of those portals. My website http://www.realestatefair.net is a clearing house for European websites sending listings via XML feeds twice a day. However there is something I want to tell you about utilizing real estate portal's services, they are all targeting very different clientelle and offer different lead acquisition business models. So before subscribing with any of European websites learn as much as you can about how they bring business to you. I am not going to give examples or critique here for ethical reasons, but you can e-mail or call me at 239-297-3992 for very detailed information on how European real estate portals tick and how to work with them more effectively. The correct way of working with real estate portals and using their services to your advantage can help selling your properties on one hand and also boost your ranking and visibility on the other.
Sal Antsipenka
Century 21 Mike Miller Realty
Naples, Florida
http://www.naplesrealestateseller.com
International RealEstate Buyer Leads
http://www.realestatefair.net
Submitted by Tim Ryan on May 31, 2009 - 10:46am.
I think of starting my overseas marketing, especially of Naples foreclosures. Any suggestions which portals are good for low end real estate leads?
Tim Ryan-Amerivest Realty
http://www.naplesguru.com
http://www.enaplesrealestate.com
Submitted by Nick Stuart on June 9, 2009 - 7:44am.
I am a site owner that didnt make the 100 so I obviioulsy have issues becasue I think http://www.spanishhotproperties.com/ has a lot more to offer than some of the sites especially as we are ahead of the game concerning video. Let me know wha you think
Nick
http://www.spanishhotproperties.com/blog/
http://www.spanishhotproperties.com/
Submitted by james alzamare on October 7, 2009 - 11:35am.
Fantastic list for property's around the world this one should def be added Panama Property .
With the US economic crisis I'm seriously looking to relocate. I'm leaning towards Croatia personally.
Regards
James
Submitted by Susan Baker on February 21, 2010 - 11:49pm.
Hi, thanks for sharing this informative and very well written article. I agree with Doug, if I look in for real estate websites in Boston, then I can see many local websites that aren’t listed here. Let’s take www.lrgboston.com for example which is known for unique listings for Boston condos in local community but isn’t listed here. And, I think they are serving the seller/ buyer better. For example, they have a pretty interesting blog, especially for sports fans or theater goers interested in Boston real estate. In all, I appreciate your effort.
Submitted by Jeremy Langert on July 11, 2010 - 7:52pm.
All great portals here. I have used many of these including Property Sold to sell real estate. It is incredible the amount of exposure realtors can get online nowadays compared to how things used to be. Real Estate Vancouver
Submitted by Gary Robinson on November 27, 2010 - 7:51pm.
Have many of you considered working with Fractional Properties?
http://www.ascentvip.com/our-properties
Submitted by Justin Balbierer on April 14, 2011 - 2:48pm.
I recently started a global real estate portal called Global Escape Realty . The site specializes in international real estate listings and vacation rentals. Feel free to check it out and see what you think. I am definitely looking for feedback from those who view it.
Submitted by Frank verdin on August 2, 2011 - 2:49pm.
Thanks for your posting on the vacation industry. We would also like to include that if you are one senior thinking about traveling, it is absolutely essential that you buy travel cover for elderly people. When traveling, older persons are at greatest risk being in need of a professional medical emergency. Obtaining the right insurance policy package for one's age group can protect your health and give you peace of mind.
mattson
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