Last year, Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate battled it out for the top position in the monthly real estate website rankings maintained by Web metrics firm Experian Hitwise. So far this year, Zillow has been king of the hill, having bumped Yahoo Real Estate from the top spot in March.
Jockeying for the spots below first place has also been fierce, with Trulia jumping two positions into second place on the Hitwise list in June. Trulia leapfrogged over third-place Realtor.com, bumping Yahoo Real Estate into third place in the process. AOL Real Estate, meanwhile, moved up two positions from May to June, but there were no new websites in the top 10.
The Hitwise rankings don’t tally mobile app users, an increasingly popular option among consumers conducting listing searches. But they still provide a window into who’s winning the battle for eyeballs — an important consideration for brokers and agents in deciding where to spend their marketing dollars.
According to Hitwise, the top 10 websites on the list captured 38.9 percent of all visits in the real estate category.
Zillow commanded the greatest market share in June (8.61 percent), followed by Trulia (6.89 percent), Realtor.com (6.52 percent), and Yahoo Real Estate (6.06 percent). Rounding out the top 10 were Homes.com with 3.41 percent market share, MSN Real Estate (1.88 percent), Apartment Guide (1.57 percent), AOL Real Estate (1.43 percent), Rent.com (1.30 percent) and MyNewPlace (1.23 percent).
Further complicating the rankings are alliances between several of the top listing portals. Zillow powers for-sale listings on Yahoo Real Estate and sells targeted ads to real estate agents and brokers that appear on both sites. Hitwise shows Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate with a combined 14.67 percent market share.
MSN Real Estate serves up framed Realtor.com search results — including lead forms for buyer’s agents, when those are displayed. According to Hitwise, Realtor.com and MSN Real Estate have a combined 8.4 percent market share of traffic in the real estate category (Realtor.com operator Move Inc. also supplies a separate set of listings to AOL Real Estate through a subsidiary, ListHub).
That compares to a 10.14 percent combined market share for the next 10 most popular sites on the Hitwise list: ZipRealty (1.17 percent), HomeAway (1.15 percent), Apartments.com (1.14 percent), LoopNet (1.06 percent), Re/max Real Estate (0.98 percent), ForRent.com (0.97 percent), HAR.com (0.95 percent), Rentals.com (0.95 percent), Redfin (0.93 percent), and HotPads.com (0.83 percent).
Six websites entered the top 100 last month, GetForeclosedHome.com (54th), MLSLI.com (91st), I Rent To Own (92nd), Property Shark (95th), Edina Realty (99th), and OurParents.com. Edina Realty recently made headlines for its decision to withold listings data from national third-party websites, in part to boost traffic to its own site.
The six websites leaving the top 100 in June were Rent To Own Direct (163rd), HiddenListings (117th), rentBits (128th), John L. Scott Real Estate (108th), RatePlug (114th), WhiteFence (102nd).
Top-ranked search terms were "zillow," "realtor.com," "trulia," "realtor," "zillow.com," "remax," "apartment finder," "century 21," "coldwell banker," "har.com," "homes.com," "real estate," "apartments for rent," "re max," "howard hanna," "homes for sale," "har," "wyndham vacation resorts," "www.zillow.com," and "trulia.com."
Fast-moving sites in June included Calcagni (up 449 places to 354), Tropicasa Realty (up 1,285 places to 1,089), GeoDataPlus (up 447 places to 605), RentToOwn.org (up 174 places to 239), Real Capital Analytics (up 344 places to 684), Panhandlebeachresorts.com (up 585 places to 1,284), FastHomeOffer.com (up 485 places to 1,068), gastonhomes.gastongazette.com (up 603 places to 1,316), Crystal Coast Realty (up 349 places to 871), Network Real Estate of Wilmington, N.C. (up 290 places to 757).