Property search site Trulia.com was the fourth most-visited real estate site in July, switching places with Rent.com, which fell to fifth place in the monthly rankings compiled by Web metrics firm Experian Hitwise. The firm bases its reports on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
Trulia’s market share was 2.96 percent last month, compared to Rent’s 2.84 percent share. Realtor.com, Yahoo Real Estate, and Zillow, in that order, retained their top three spots on the list. Realtor.com’s market share was essentially flat at 5.72 percent, while Yahoo Real Estate’s share fell slightly to 4.45 percent from 4.55 percent in June. Zillow’s market share rose to 3.94 percent from 3.75 percent.
ZipRealty (No. 6), MSN Real Estate (No. 7), Homes.com (No. 8), and Apartment Guide (No. 9) kept their rankings in July. RE/MAX Real Estate recovered the No. 10 spot it lost in June to MyNewPlace, which consequently fell to No. 11 in July.
There was a lot of activity among the remaining top 20 spots, many of them climbing or falling by one or two spots. ForRent.com rose to No. 12 from No. 13 in June, bumping Rentals.com to No. 14.
Apartments.com rose one spot to No. 13. Redfin jumped two spots to No. 15, sending Century 21 Real Estate to 16th place. Vacation rental site HomeAway and Move.com each jumped two places, to No. 17 and 18, respectively.
ConnectWithLife, a search site for real estate, autos, loans, insurance, and home improvement professionals, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) site both left the top 20 list.
They were replaced by ApartmentFinder.com, which had fallen out of the top 20 in June, and by commercial real estate site LoopNet. LoopNet had been rising steadily in the ranks for the past few months.
The top 10 websites made up 29.64 percent of all visits in the Hitwise "Business and Finance — Real Estate" category. The top 20 sites accounted for 40.34 percent of the traffic, while the top 100 sites captured 70.12 percent of category traffic.
All three saw slight increases in market share from June. Visitors spent an average 9 minutes, 42 seconds at real estate category websites in July, a 12-second increase from June.
The top 10 most popular real estate search terms in July were, in order, "realtor.com," "zillow," "apartments for rent," "remax," "real estate," "century 21," "houses for rent," "zillow.com,""homes for sale," and "coldwell banker" — the same terms as in June.
All except "realtor.com," which accounted for 1.59 percent of search terms leading to a real estate category site, accounted for less than 1 percent of visits.
The ActiveRain Real Estate Network made it onto the firm’s list of fast-moving sites, rising eight places to No. 37. Other fast-moving sites in the category included Pam Harrington Exclusives (up 357 places to No. 1,036), sold.com (up 411 places to No. 1,328), apartments.cazoodle.com (up 57 to No. 217), Winter Park Rental (up 399 places to No. 1,478), and Siebert Realty (up 59 places to No. 259).
Five sites entered the top 100 most visited real estate sites: My Unclaimed Property (to No.92 from No. 118 in June), Equity Residential (to No. 93 from No. 101), Williams & Williams Auctioneers (to No. 95 from No. 111), MyCheapApartments.com (to No. 96 from No. 190), and Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage (to No. 98 from No. 104).
Five sites also left the top 100: Chicago Housing Authority’s Family Wait List Lottery (to No. 349 from No. 74), Michaelson Connor & Boul (to No.114 from No. 92), Utah Real Estate (to No. 108 from No. 93), California Association of Realtors (to No. 105 from No. 94), and www.tenmanagement.com (to No.119 from No. 99).
