Online real estate marketing site HomeGain.com hopped up four places in a monthly ranking of industry Web sites to seventh place, and foreclosure info site RealtyTrac.com moved up three spots in November to join the top-10 list, Web metrics company Hitwise reported.
Realtor.com maintained its dominance as the top real estate category Web site on the Hitwise list, which ranks sites according to total U.S. market share of visits to real estate Web sites.
But Realtor.com’s market share sank from 7.68 percent in the Hitwise October report (see Inman News) to 6.43 percent in the November report, with second-place Yahoo Real Estate gaining ground — from 4.11 percent real estate category market share in October to 4.64 percent in November.
The Yahoo Real Estate site, at RealEstate.Yahoo.com, recently underwent a facelift, and the site now offers larger property photos and automatically updating displays of property listings based on users’ search refinements (see Inman News).
Zillow.com ranked third on the list with a 2.7 percent market share, followed by ZipRealty.com (2.55 percent), Rent.com (1.88 percent), REMAX.com (1.85 percent), HomeGain.com (1.7 percent), ServiceMagic.com (1.68 percent), HUD.gov (1.64 percent), and RealtyTrac (1.32 percent).
While HomeGain and RealtyTrac had the biggest monthly gains in the Hitwise list, MSN Real Estate’s RealEstate.MSN.com site had the largest drop. That site fell five places, from 10th in October to 15th in November. And ServiceMagic dropped three spots to eighth in the monthly rankings.
Included in the Hitwise real estate rankings are sites with a focus on residential and commercial real estate and property services, including brokerage company Web sites, real estate databases, classified sites featuring properties to buy, sell, rent or lease, and services that cater to home buyers, sellers or renters. Hitwise tracked 3,194 of sites meeting those criteria in November.
Hitwise reported that 26.4 percent of all visits to real estate category Web sites went to the top-10 sites in November, with 65.84 percent of visits going to the top-100 sites in that category. The average visit duration to real estate category Web sites was 11 minutes, 34 seconds.
Nine sites joined the Hitwise top-100 list in November that were not on October’s list, including: JohnLaingHomes.com (from 1,140th to 44th), ConnectWithLife.com (from 180th to 75th), LandsofAmerica.com (102nd to 86th), RealtyStore.com (136th to 89th), Enormo.com (did not rank in October, 91st in November), TheVillages.com (133rd to 92nd), ForeclosureToGo.com (from 107th to 93rd), National Home Management Solution at NHMSI.com (from 104th to 95th), and ForeclosureStore.com (from 148th to 96th).
And the nine sites that left the top-100 list in November include: HomeForeclosureFighter.com (from 36th to 472nd), DelWebb.com (66th to 261st), Pulte.com (75th to 244th), TourFactory.com (90th to 101st), RealtyUSA.com (94th to 105th), Bid4Assets.com (96th to 109th), ApartmentFinder.com (97th to 117th), Obeo.com (98th to 102nd), and SibcyCline.com (100th to 112th).
"Realtor.com" was the most popular search term that delivered traffic to real estate category Web sites in November, Hitwise reported, followed by "remax," "zillow," "real estate," "apartments for rent," "zillow.com," "realtor," "century 21," "remax.com homes for sale," and "coldwell banker."
"Fast-moving" real estate category Web sites — which Hitwise defines as those that have jumped the most in its overall rankings in the past four months ending in November — include luxury travel and vacation-home site HalogenGuides.com, up 1,465 places to 741st; and GMAC Real Estate’s ElegantHomes.com, up 656 places to 1,183rd.
Other fast-moving sites in the real estate category: HRBlock.com/mortgages (up 377 places to 209th), FayRanches.com (up 355 places to 1,052nd), ForeclosedHomes.com (up 311 places to 478th), Kurtzman Carson Consultants’ site at KCCLLC.net (up 174 places to 527th), HomeListingsFinder.com (up 87 places to 168th), House-Real-Estate.com (up 71 places to 173rd), ColdwellBankerMoves.com (up 45 places to 164th), and TheVillages.com (up 41 places to 92nd).
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