ZipRealty improves to 5th in real estate Web rankings

Real estate brokerage company Web site ZipRealty.com improved its ranking to fifth among the top-20 most-visited industry Web sites in March — the company ranked seventh on the list in February and ninth in January, metrics company Hitwise reported.

The top four companies on the list remained unchanged from February to March. Realtor.com topped the list with a 4.75 percent market share of visits to real estate Web sites, followed by brokerage company RE/MAX’s remax.com Web site with a 2.85 percent market share, Yahoo’s realestate.yahoo.com site with a 2.35 percent market share and valuation and marketing site Zillow.com with a 2.2 percent market share.

Realtor.com had a 5.16 percent market share in February and remax.com had a 2.61 percent market share.

Homegain, which was ranked by Hitwise as the second most visited real estate Web site in January and fifth in February, slipped to seventh in March with a 2.06 percent market share.

Among the top 20 sites, MSN’s real estate site at realestate.msn.com had the steepest drop in rankings in March, falling from 11th in February to 17th in March. The site was ranked 18th in January and 13th in December 2007.

Brokerage site Century21.com dropped three places, from 10th in February to 13th in March after ranking 16th in January and the previous month.

The top-10 real estate category Web sites attracted about 23.7 percent of all visits to the category in March, Hitwise reported, while the top-20 sites received 35.9 percent of visits and the top-100 sites received 66.3 percent of visits.

In February, the top-10 sites received about 24.1 percent of all visits to real estate category sites, and in January the top-10 sites received about 27.4 percent of all real estate category visits.

Visitors spent an average 11 minutes and 47 seconds at real estate category Web sites in March, Hitwise reported, compared to 11 minutes and 51 seconds in February.

A San Jose Mercury News Web real estate Web site, at lead.mbrokertools.com, joined the top-100 list in March with an 84th place ranking. LeskoTimeShares.com also joined the top-100 list with an 83rd place ranking and RealPatrol.com, a real estate search portal, ranked 73rd on the list in March.

Those sites that left the top-100 list include My.Realtor.com, which dropped from 54th in February to 107th in March; Realtor.org, which fell from 91st in February to 101st in March; and Foreclosures.com, which dropped from 97th in February to 106th in March.

My.Realtor.com allows Realtor.com users to save searches and individual properties for future reference, to get mortgage rates through the site’s Mortgage Monitor tool and to subscribe to an "Everything Home" newsletter. Realtor.org is the official site for members of the National Association of Realtors trade group.

"Realtor.com" was the top search term that generated traffic at real estate category Web sites for the four-week period ending March 29. "Remax" was second, followed by "real estate," "zillow," "zillow.com," "homes for sale," "apartments," "century 21," "coldwell banker," "apartments for rent," "mls" and "realtor."

ResortQuestDelaware.com was the fastest-moving Web site among those tracked by Hitwise for the four-month period ending in March. That site moved up 363 places to 682nd in the Hitwise real estate category rankings.

Vivre Property sites, at 1stforfrenchproperty.com, moved up 300 places to 982nd during the four-month period. That site offers searches of European properties.

ColdwellBankerPreviews.com moved up 211 places to 171st; AmericasChoice.com moved up 97 places to 243rd; Cyberhomes.com moved up 96 places to 181st; AuctionAcres.com moved up 74 places to 204th; MetroListMLS.com moved up 46 places; Movoto.com moved up 41 places; USHomeAuction.com moved up 34 places; and ForeclosuresToGo.com moved up 15 places.

ComScore Media Metrix, another Web metrics company, reported in March that Move Inc.’s online network, including Realtor.com and Move.com, attracted 9.38 million total unique visitors in February 2007, up 22 percent compared to February 2007.

Move Inc. sites accounted for 22.2 percent of the total unique visitors to real estate Web sites in February 2008, comScore also reported.

Yahoo Real Estate’s realestate.yahoo.com ranked second on the comScore list with 5.32 million total unique visitors in February 2008, up 56 percent compared to the same month last year.

MSN Real Estate ranked third, followed by AOL Real Estate, rent.com, homegain.com, apartments.com, trulia.com, remax.com, zillow.com, realtytrac.com, homes.com, HPCInter@active sites (apartmentguide.com and others), servicemagic.com, century21.com, NCI Interactive sites (apartmentfinder.com and others), forrent.com, coldwellbanker.com, mlxchange.com and foreclosure.com.

Hitwise Real Estate Web Site Report, March 2008

Source: Hitwise.