Inman

RealtyTrac sinks, Move.com and HAR.com gain in Hitwise rankings

Foreclosures search site RealtyTrac.com sank in its market share of Web visitors to real estate sites in November, dropping to 13th place from its second-place ranking in October, Web metrics company Hitwise reported today.

Move.com, a companion property-search site to Realtor.com, moved up in ranking from ninth place in October to fourth place in November, and the Houston Association of Realtors’ property-search site at HAR.com jumped up from 26th place in October to 20th in November.

WhiteFence.com, a site that allows consumers to compare pricing and features of home services such as electricity and high-speed Internet, also joined the top-20 list of real estate sites, rising from 21st in October to 18th in November.

Real estate search site Trulia.com, which made its debut in the Hitwise monthly top-20 list of popular real estate sites when it rose to 18th place in September, improved to 17th in October and in November ranked 13th.

Realtor.com’s market share of Web visitors among real estate sites stood at 4.7 percent in November — that is half of the site’s 9.4 percent market share in August. Move.com’s market share, meanwhile, improved from 1.5 percent in August to 2.4 percent in November. RealtyTrac’s market share fell from 4.1 percent in August to 1.3 percent in November.

Hitwise reported that 67.1 percent of all visits to real estate category Web sites in November went to the top-100 sites, while 36.1 percent of visits went to the top-20 Web sites for the category and 24.1 percent of all visits went to the top-10 sites. In August, 69.8 percent of all visits to the category went to the top-100 sites, 41.5 percent of visits went to the top-20 sites for the category, and 30.3 percent of all visits to the real estate category went to the top-10 sites.

In November, 2,775 Web sites were ranked by Hitwise in the real estate category. The average visit duration to real estate category Web sites was 11 minutes, nine seconds in November, compared to an average visit duration of 10 minutes, 37 seconds in October. Hitwise ranks about 1 million unique Web sites daily.

Real estate sites that entered the Hitwise top-100 list in November include: TenManagement.com, ForeclosureToGo.com, The Westfield Group at Westfield.com.au, JustSnooping.com, Home-Listings.org, RentalHomesPlus.com, RealtyUSA.com, and Euroresidentes.com. Sites that left the top-100 list in the real estate category include: Pulte Homes at Pulte.com, MyCostaParadise.com, RottenNeighbor.com, KBHome.com, RealEstateShows.com, Crye-Leike.com, NewHomeSource.com and LakeHouse.com.

“Realtor.com” was the most popular real estate search term for the four-week period ending Nov. 24 that led to traffic at real estate Web sites, followed by “remax,” “real estate,” “apartments,” “homes for sale,” “century 21,” “zillow.com,” “zillow,” “realtor,” and “for sale by owner.”

Fast-moving Web sites for the category, which are Web sites that have experienced major increases in ranking during the four-month period ending in November, include RoommateNation.com, a roommate-finder online service, up 370 places; PMI-Auction.com, up 194 places; RanchBrokers.com, up 168 places; JohnRWood.com, up 151 places; LowesMoving.com, up 127 places; Homethinking.com, up 119 places; County of Charlotte property appraiser at CCAppraiser.com, up 99 places; Homestore.com, up 96 places; RentLaw.com, up 80 places; and TollBrothers.com, up 51 places.

Hitwise Real Estate Category Report, November 2007

Source: Hitwise

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