Real estate search and valuation site Zillow.com relinquished its title as the second-most-visited real estate Web site to Yahoo! Real Estate in December, one month after upsetting the status quo among top sites in rankings compiled by online metrics firm Hitwise.
Zillow rival Trulia.com also fell — from sixth to seventh place on the Hitwise top 20, displaced by ServiceMagic, Hitwise said.
Other sites gaining in the rankings were Apartments.com (up one place to 10th), ForRent.com (up one position, to 14th), Apartment Guide (up one place, to 15th), Listingbook Services (up three positions, to 16th).
Three sites entered the Top 20: Redfin bounced back from 22nd to re-enter the Hitwise Top 20 at 18th, HUD’s FHA portal rose from 21st to 19th, and Rentals.com shot up from 25th to 20th.
Bumped from the Hitwise top 20 were AOL Real Estate (ranked 14th in November), HomeGain (15th in November), and LoopNet (20th in November).
Realtor.com remained the dominant Web site in the real estate category, with 6.79 percent market share. Rounding out the top 10 Web sites were Yahoo! Real Estate (3.8 percent), Zillow (3.5 percent), ZipRealty (2.91 percent), eBay’s Rent.com (2.57 percent), Service Magic (2.27 percent), Trulia.com (2.16 percent), Homes.com (1.99 percent), MSN Real Estate (1.78 percent) and Apartments.com (1.32 percent).
Hitwise said the top 10 Web sites captures 29.1 percent of all visits in the real estate category, and that 68.5 percent of traffic went to the top 20 sites.
Moving into Hitwise’s list of top 100 real estate sites were RealCompOnline.com (82nd); Home Listing Finder (95th); and the California Association of Realtors (97th). Displaced from the top 100 were FederalHousingTaxCredit.com (139th), Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage (119th), and Bluegreenonline.com (110th).
The top 10 search terms were realtor.com, zillow, apartments for rent, real estate, century 21, homes for sale, zillow.com, remax, houses for rent, and houses for sale.
Fast-moving Web sites included ARIA Resort and Casino (up 129 places to 122nd); Realty Executives (up 950 places to 978th); Real-Estate.com (up 427 places to 686th); OLR Public (up 351 places to 627th); Chicora Real Estate (up 414 places to 802nd); eLandUSA.com (up 601 places to 1,203); Rainbow Realty (up 410 places to 999th); Biztrader.com (up 496 places to 1,192nd); Irvine Spectrum Center (up 209 places to 583rd); and Paradiseretreats.net (up 646 places to 1,836).
***
What’s your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor.
