Brokerages and websites featuring apartment rentals boosted their share of Internet traffic during April, with Rentals.com joining a list of top 10 real estate sites and RE/MAX Real Estate moving up in rankings compiled by online metrics firm Hitwise.
RE/MAX Real Estate, which broke into the Hitwise top 10 in March, built on that momentum to become the eighth most visited real estate website in April, Hitwise said.
Other brokerage websites seeing gains in April included Century 21 Real Estate (up two positions to 15th), Redfin (up three positions to 16th) and Coldwell Banker Real Estate, which rose two positions to break into the Hitwise top 20 at 19th.
In climbing five positions to claim the ninth spot, Rentals.com bumped MSN Real Estate off the top 10 list and into 12th place.
Other websites emphasizing rentals moving up in the Hitwise rankings were ForRent.com (up two positions to 14th), Apartment Guide (up two positions to 11th), and MyNewPlace, which reclaimed the 10th position it held in February.
Rent.com retained its ranking as the fourth most visited real estate website on the Web, and the most visited site among those focused on rentals.
Homes.com moved up one position to reclaim its previous position of seventh on the Hitwise top 10, but the rankings among the top six sites remained unchanged: Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate, Rent.com, ZipRealty and Trulia.
Breaking into the Hitwise top 20 with Coldwell Banker was ConnectWithLife, a Reply Inc. real estate and automobile portal, which rose 29 places to 20th. ServiceMagic, previously ranked seventh, has been removed from the list of real estate-related sites and recategorized. And HomeAway, which ranked 20th in March, fell from the top 20 list in April.
Apartments.com fell two places, to 13th, and Listingbook Services fell three positions to 18th. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website, HUD.gov, reversed its recent slide in the rankings, rising one position to 17th.
The 10 most popular search terms were realtor.com, zillow, apartments for rent, real estate, remax, zillow.com, century 21, homes for sale, houses for rent, and coldwell banker.
Fast-rising sites included Del Webb Active Adult Communities (up 1,275 places to 247), MyCheapApartments.com (up 184 places to 104th), Prudential Ambrose and Shoemaker Real Estate (up 773 places to 872), Prudential York Simpson (up 613 places to 835), Cityfeet.com (up 60 places to 99), Irongate Realtors (up 227 places to 534), MilitarybyOwner.com (up 66 places to 172), Home Debut (up 245 places to 710), Hotpads.com (up 11 places to 36), and NeighborCity.com (up 57 places to 187).
Hitwise monitors Internet service provider (ISP) networks and ranks websites according to a range of metrics including visits, pages and average visit time. Hitwise also analyzes the movements of visitors between websites.
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