Inman

Real estate Web traffic is booming

Traffic to real estate sites monitored by Web research firm comScore Media Metrix increased 23 percent from April 2005 to April 2006, from 34.7 million unique visitors to 42.7 million unique visitors.

The number of unique visitors to real estate sites rose 12.3 percent in April 2006 compared to March 2006, comScore Media Metrix also reported.

The Move Inc. (formerly Homestore) network of Web sites, which includes Realtor.com and Move.com, topped the list in April with 11.1 million unique visitors, up 8 percent from April 2005 and 15.3 percent from March 2006.

MSN Real Estate improved 56.7 percent from March 2006 to April 2006 and climbed to second on the list, growing from 3.7 million unique visitors in March 2006 to 5.8 million unique visitors in April 2006, comScore reported.

HomeGain was third on the list with 4.3 million unique visitors in April, down from 4.8 million in March; AOL Real Estate was fourth with 3.9 million unique users; RealtyTrac.com was fifth with 2.9 million; Rent.com was sixth with 2.8 million; ServiceMagic was seventh with 2.7 million; followed by Apartments.com in eighth with 2.5 million, Zillow.com in ninth with 2.3 million; and RE/MAX International Inc. at 10th with 2.2 million.

Yahoo! Real Estate, ColdwellBanker.com, HouseValues sites, ForRent.com sites, Century21.com, Primedia, Homes.com, Netscape Home and Real Estate, Homescape.com and Living Choices Web sites also ranked in the top 20 in April for unique visitors among real estate sites.

Zillow.com’s unique visitors increased 1.9 percent from March to April while the site slipped from eighth to ninth in the rankings.

The real estate category of Web sites tracked by Media Metrix has seen some major growth over the past few months, with unique visitors to the category growing 18.5 from February to March. By comparison, the total unique visitors at all Internet sites tracked by Media Metrix grew 2.8 percent during that time.

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