Top listing portals continue to pull away from the pack

The top online real estate sites continue to capture more and more market share, with the five most popular listing sites — Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo Homes, realtor.com and Homes.com — hogging 38.99 percent of all traffic from desktop computers in October, according to Experian Marketing Services data.

That’s just a hair less than the share of traffic commanded by the top 10 real estate websites in July 2012 (39.93 percent).

October 2013 traffic to real estate sites from desktop computers 

Source: Experian Marketing Services

Yahoo Homes overtook realtor.com for the No. 3 spot in October, continuing the long-term trend of declining market share for the official listing portal of the National Association of Realtors. Realtor.com lost the No. 1 spot in 2011 to Yahoo Homes (then known as Yahoo Real Estate) and then saw Zillow and Trulia overtake it in 2012. Until October, it had held steady at the No. 3 spot.

The rest of the sites in the top 10 in October (in order) were: MSN Real Estate (2.04 percent market share), FrontDoor (1.46 percent), Apartment Guide (1.43 percent), Redfin (1.2 percent), and LoopNet (1.18 percent).

The No. 9 ranking for the tech-focused brokerage Redfin made it the most-visited brokerage website, and marked the first time the company’s website has been in the top 10 this year. The Seattle-based brokerage this month announced a $50 million funding round that’s viewed as putting the company on track for an initial public offering in 2014.

Redfin’s Emeryville, Calif.-based rival, ZipRealty Inc., held on to its No. 12 ranking with 1.1 percent market share.

When considering traffic from mobile devices (excluding mobile app traffic), the mindshare of the top sites is even greater. The top five sites accounted for 45.96 percent of traffic from mobile devices, with Zillow taking for more than half of that, and Trulia and realtor.com making up the bulk of the rest.

October 2013 traffic to real estate sites from mobile devices*

Source: Experian Marketing Services *Excludes traffic from mobile apps

The other five most popular sites in October from mobile devices (in order) were: Apartment Guide (2.24 percent), Apartments.com (1.65 percent), ZipRealty (1.59 percent), Rent.com (1.51 percent), and HotPads.com (1.45 percent).

The big three portals — Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com

Zillow, which amplified its marketing and advertising spends with the goal of increasing its mindshare in 2013, has increased its lead over rivals. Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com have all grown market share since January, but Zillow has made bigger gains with a jump of 5.32 percentage points over that time span compared with 1.16 percentage points for Trulia and 0.69 percentage point for realtor.com.

Source: Experian Marketing Services

From January to October, Trulia lost 4.16 percentage points of Web market share from desktop computers and 3.16 percentage points of mobile market share (excluding traffic from mobile apps) to Zillow, according to Experian. Realtor.com lost 4.63 percentage points and 3.04 percentage points, respectively, to Zillow over the same time period.

In October, Zillow generated just under two times the number of visits to its site from desktop computers than Trulia (and more than twice the amount realtor.com attracted) and brought more than twice the number of visits from mobile devices than Trulia (and more than four times the number from realtor.com), according to Experian.

Source: Experian Marketing Services *Excludes traffic from mobile apps

If the top real estate sites’ partnerships are considered, they’re taking an even larger share of traffic.

Zillow has powered for-sale and rental listings on Yahoo Homes since 2010, and began powering HGTV’s FrontDoor Real Estate‘s listings in February. (FrontDoor’s Web traffic shifts dramatically in conjunction with home giveaway sweepstakes its parent company Scripps Networks LLC promotes on HGTV television shows.)

Combined traffic to Zillow’s network accounted for 22.73 percent of all real estate traffic from desktop computers in October, according to Experian.

Trulia signed an advertising deal with Apartment Guide and Rent.com operator Primedia in November 2011 that brings multifamily properties on those sites to Trulia. Including traffic share from those two sources brings Trulia’s market share to 10.75 percent in October.

Realtor.com powers for-sale and for-rent listings on MSN Real Estate, No. 6 on Experian’s October ranking with a market share of 2.04 percent. Realtor.com operator Move Inc. also supplies a separate set of listings through subsidiary ListHub to AOL Real Estate, which was 13th with a market share of 1.01 percent in October. All told, realtor.com’s network represented 9.77 percent of traffic to real estate sites from desktop computers in October.

As a whole, the big three portals’ networks accounted for 43.25 percent of real estate-related Web traffic from desktop computers in October.

Full rankings

October 2013 traffic to real estate sites from desktop computers 

Source: Experian Marketing Services

October 2013 traffic to real estate sites from mobile devices* 

Source: Experian Marketing Services *Excludes traffic from mobile apps.