Inman

Realtor.com, Move.com top Hitwise rankings

Realtor.com and its companion property-search site, Move.com, were the most visited real estate Web sites in December, according to the latest numbers from Hitwise.

Realtor.com, the official site of the National Association of Realtors, retained its dominance at the top of the Hitwise rankings last month, with an 8.03 percent market share. Move.com moved up from fourth place to second place in December, with a 2.73 percent market share.

There were no newcomers to the ranks of the top 10 real estate Web sites in December, although Trulia.com came close to breaking into that elite group, Hitwise reported. Trulia moved up from 14th place to 11th place, with a 1.42 percent market share.

All told, the top 10 Web real estate Web sites accounted for 27.1 percent of all traffic in that category, Hitwise estimated, up from 24.1 percent in November.

In addition to Move.com, top 10 sites moving up in the rankings were Zillow and Rent.com, while top 10 Web sites RE/MAX Real Estate and Yahoo! Real Estate fell in Hitwise’s rankings.

Zillow’s 2.28 percent market share helped it move up one position into fourth place on the Hitwise list in December, and Rent.com also moved up one place to sixth, with a 2.12 percent market share.

RE/MAX Real Estate (2.28 percent market share) slipped from second to fifth, while Yahoo! Real Estate (2.05 percent market share) fell one position, to seventh on the list.

Hitwise reported that the top 20 real estate Web sites captured 38.8 percent of traffic in the category, compared with 36.1 percent in November.

Returning to the ranks of top 20 real estate Web sites in December was Coldwell Banker Real Estate, up two positions to 20th with a 0.87 percent market share. The Coldwell Banker site held the 11th position on the Hitwise list in September, sliding to 18th in October.

As Coldwell Banker moved back up the rankings, it bumped the Houston Association of Realtors’ official site, HAR.com, out of the top 20. Other top 20 real estate sites rising in the rankings in December were VisualTour.com, up one place to 14th with a 1.2 percent market share, and Homes.com, up one position to 15th with a 1.17 percent market share.

Continuing a recent slide in the Hitwise rankings, foreclosure tracking site RealtyTrac fell to 17th place, with a 1.16 percent market share. Last fall RealtyTrac was the second most popular real estate Web site, Hitwise estimated, before slipping to 13th place in November.

The top 100 real estate Web sites on the Hitwise list captured 68.12 percent of traffic in the category, up from 67.1 percent in November.

Moving into the top 100 were TourFactory.com (81st), Online-home-listings.com (87th), Foreclosures.com (95th), Landwatch.com (97th), Lands of America (98th), Real Estate Shows (99th), and Getmytimesharesold.com (100).

Falling out of the top 100 were Realtor Resource Center (113th), ForeclosuresToGo.com (103rd), Utah Real Estate (102nd), Just Snooping (122), Home-Listings.org (104th), RentalHomesPlus (105th) and RealtyUSA (106).

“Fast movers” — local Web sites experiencing substantial increases in rank within the category — included Furnished Quarters, up 438 places to 443rd, Pardee Homes, up 64 places to 127th, Landwatch.com, up 41 places to 97th, and Lands of South Carolina, up 372 places to 895th.

The average visit to real estate Web sites in December was 11 minutes, 38 seconds, up about 30 seconds from November.

Hitwise Real Estate Category Report, December 2007

Source: Hitwise

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