Home valuation and property marketing site Zillow.com passed Yahoo Real Estate to rank sixth among the most visited real estate Web sites in May, Web metrics company Hitwise reported this week, and Move Inc.’s Move.com rose from 11th in April to 10th in May.
Real estate marketing site HouseValues.com took the largest monthly jump on the top-20 list of most visited sites, rising from 24th in April to 18th in May. Other sites with improved monthly rankings include Century 21 Real Estate (century21.com), from 12th to 11th; ServiceMagic.com, from 15th to 12th; VisualTour.com, from 16th to 15th; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (hud.gov), from 19th to 17th; and MLS of Northern Illinois (mlsni.connectmls.com), from 21st to 19th.
Sites with monthly declines in visitor traffic include Yahoo Real Estate, from sixth in April to seventh in May, Coldwell Banker Real Estate (coldwellbanker.com), from 10th to 13th; and ApartmentGuide.com, from 13th to 16th. Hitwise data is based on U.S. market share of visits, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category from the company’s sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise ranks about 900,000 Web sites daily.
Realtor.com, which had 8.42 percent market share in the real estate category in April, lost 0.3 percent in market share in May, Hitwise reported. RealtyTrac.com improved its market share by 0.15 percent; HomeGain.com improved by 0.13 percent; Rent.com improved by 0.11 percent; remax.com improved by 0.23 percent; Zillow improved by 0.09 percent; Yahoo Real Estate declined by 0.17 percent; ZipRealty.com rose 0.1 percent; Century21.com dropped 0.05 percent; and Move.com moved up 0.03 percent.
The top 10 real estate Web sites captured 28.9 percent of all visits to Web sites in that category in May, compared with 28.4 percent in April, according to the Hitwise report, while sites ranked 11th through 20th gathered 11.5 visits and sites ranked 21st through 100th had a 28.8 percent share of visits to the real estate category. In April, real estate sites ranked 11th through 20th accounted for 12.4 percent of visits for the category.
The average duration of visits to real estate sites in May was 10 minutes and 38 seconds, compared with 10 minutes and 35 seconds in April.
Sites that left the Hitwise top-100 list in May include Monster Relocation Center (monster.moving.com), which fell from 77th in April to 143rd in May; MRIS.com, from 83rd to 103rd; HomeAway.com, from 86th to 108th; TheHousingPages.com, from 90th to 171st; RealtyUSA.com, from 92nd to 105th; MLSListings.com, from 94th to 109th; LongandFoster.com, from 95th to 107th; NewHomeSource.com, from 98th to 101st; McBreo.com, from 99th to 124th; and CentexHomes.com, from 100th to 119th.
Sites that joined the Hitwise top-100 list in May include HUDForeclosed.com, which rose from 110th in April to 77th in May; My.Realtor.com, at 81st in May (not ranked in April); JustSnooping.com, from 420th to 89th; USAMLS.net, from 102nd to 90th; FidelityMLSSolutions.com, 93rd in May (not ranked in April); RealTracs, from 108th to 94th; lvarmls.rapmls.com, from 112th to 96th; RMLS.com, from 106th to 97th; MLSPropertyFinder.com, from 98th to 109th; and Realtor.org, from 101st to 99th.
The top real estate search terms for the four weeks ending March 31 that led to traffic at real estate Web sites are, in order: realtor.com, remax, apartments, real estate, homes for sale, century 21, coldwell banker, apartments for rent, zillow, and remax.com.
Web sites with substantial increases in ranking for a four-month period ending in May include: Lease purchase site Lease2Purchase.com, up 216 places; residential and commercial builder and property manager site Farash.com, up 193 places; real estate development, construction, leasing, sales and management services site DavidSBrown.com, up 155 places; Arkansas multiple listing services site CARMLS.com, up 132 places; real estate agency site HammondRE.com, up 119 places; and home valuation and marketing site Cyberhomes.com, up 117 places.
Other fast-moving sites include BuffaloApartments.com, StartRenting.com, LowesMoving.com and Masiello.com, Hitwise reported.
Source: Hitwise. Based on U.S. market share of visits — a percentage of online traffic to the real estate category, from a company sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
