Zillow does not believe Google’s newly expanded home listing ads pose an immediate threat to its business, the home search giant told Inman, pointing to pilot-market data that the company says showed no meaningful decline in traffic or search interest for Zillow.
The response came shortly after Google announced a national expansion of its HouseCanary-powered home listing ads, which place property details inside mobile search results and allow consumers to connect with local agents.
The national rollout quickly raised questions about whether Google could become a more serious competitor to the established home-search portals, but Zillow says the early evidence points in a different direction.
Zillow said daily SimilarWeb data reviewed by the company showed no negative impact on its traffic in the eight markets where Google’s pilot ran. In some markets, the company saw a traffic benefit, a Zillow spokesperson told Inman.
The company also pointed to Google Trends data that it said showed “Zillow” being searched more often than “homes for sale” or “buy a house” — the kinds of terms that surface listings in Google’s ad carousel. Zillow argues that the data suggests many consumers are not using Google instead of Zillow, but are using Google to get to Zillow.
“The fact that people’s first instinct is to look up Zillow might explain why 80 percent of Zillow’s traffic comes directly to our apps and sites,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A question of business models
Zillow’s pushback reflects a broader question hanging over Google’s expansion: Is the search giant building something that could weaken the portals, or simply adding another layer to a listing-distribution and agent-advertising ecosystem that already includes MLS feeds, brokerage websites, IDX sites, portals and paid lead products.
Zillow’s view is that Google is moving into a model that looks more like traditional lead generation and agent advertising, even as Zillow has increasingly framed its own strategy around a broader transaction platform and housing “super app.”
“We feel like this is Google getting into a business model that we are moving away from,” the Zillow spokesperson said during a call. “This is more of a pay-per-lead model, and we are moving more and more past pay-per-lead toward a success-based model.”
That makes Google’s expansion less of a direct Zillow clone, in the company’s view, and more of a potential competitor to traditional agent-advertising and lead-generation businesses.
“The search experience on Zillow is much stronger and more comprehensive and dynamic than the search experience you’re getting from Google,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the discussion around Google’s expansion has tended to treat the major portals as a single category, even though their business models and consumer experiences differ. In Zillow’s view, Google’s format may create a new home-search and agent-advertising channel, but that does not mean it poses the same kind of threat to every company in the space.
When asked for comment, Realtor.com did not directly address whether Google’s expanded home listing ads pose a competitive threat, but emphasized the importance of comprehensive listing access. A company spokesperson said “consumers deserve access to every listing, every property detail, and every professional serving their market — not just a fraction of what’s available.”
CoStar Group, parent company of Homes.com, did not provide comment by publication time. The company has long positioned Homes.com’s “your listing, your lead” model as an alternative to what CEO Andy Florance has criticized as the “lead diversion” model used by Zillow and Realtor.com, making Google’s agent-advertising format a potentially relevant test of that broader portal divide.
Brokerages see another exposure channel
From the brokerage side, eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja said he does not view Google’s expansion primarily as a threat to the home search portals, but as another channel for listing exposure. Pareja said eXp is sending all active and coming-soon listings from eXp Realty and NextHome into the program, not only coming-soon listings.
“I don’t see it that way because this is just one more avenue of displaying properties,” Pareja told Inman, referring to the idea that Google’s expansion should be viewed mainly as a portal threat. “I think the portals win on the full experience.”
Pareja said consumers often have different preferences among Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin and other search portals based on the user experience, app design and features. For eXp, he said, the value of Google’s program is more straightforward in giving agents and sellers another place to be seen.
“It’s our job to stay curious and see any and all opportunities to advertise our sellers’ listings,” Pareja said. “Whether this scales, whether it grabs a meaningful amount of eyeballs and voice share, that’s to be determined. But if we can be early and create that exposure for our customers, I don’t see how that’s anything but good.”
That view is not necessarily in conflict with Zillow’s argument. The Zillow spokesperson said the company agrees that sellers benefit when listings receive broad exposure. From Zillow’s perspective, Google may become another place where listings appear, but that does not mean agents or sellers will choose Google instead of the major portals. The spokesperson said most sellers and agents want listings to appear in as many places as possible, rather than exclusively on one platform.
“I don’t think there’s probably a world where an agent is putting a listing on Google instead of Zillow,” the spokesperson said.
The company pointed to Homes.com’s rise as an example of a new portal building an audience without materially reducing Zillow’s traffic, arguing that real estate search is not necessarily zero-sum at the listing-distribution level.
A broader channel, not just a portal rival
HouseCanary, which is powering Google’s expanded home listing ad format, has also described the model as broader than a simple portal competitor. In a response to Inman last week, HouseCanary said the pilot “succeeded enough to lead to this national expansion,” with full U.S. coverage expected this summer.
HouseCanary said it is working with additional MLSs to coordinate more feeds and expects more partners to be announced in the coming weeks, potentially as soon as this week. The company described the model as a mix of listing distribution, lead generation, agent advertising and Google Local Services Ads integration.
“It’s really a prominent new channel where buyers can discover listings,” a HouseCanary spokesperson said.
That ambiguity may be the point. Google’s expansion does not have to replace Zillow, Realtor.com or Homes.com outright to matter. It could still become another place where listings are discovered, agents are surfaced and advertising dollars are spent.
