Hitwise, the Internet traffic ranking service, just released its US Real Estate Report for February 2007. The report is based on a sample audience of 10 million US Internet users. It’s kind of like Nielsen numbers for the ‘Net.
Top 30 Real Estate Websites
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My observations:
- Move.com is on the march… Maybe Dustin Luther’s guerilla marketing tactics are paying off with some new eyeballs.
- MSN Real Estate is slipping. No surprise here. There’s been little to no development of this portal – certainly no new features to speak off. Looks like it’s getting left in the dust.
- HouseValues perking up? After a long slump HouseValues has made a significant jump in the rankings. I’ve been seeing a lot of HouseValues’ commercials on my local cable channels lately – I’m guessing this renewed advertising blitz is paying off in some traffic to the beleaguered destination.
Top Search Terms
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My observations:
- Zillow.com in the Top 10 means all its PR initiatives have paid off big time in huge brand awareness. This company has done little to no traditional marketing. That’s quite an achievement.
- Brand slugfest. Remax demolishes all other brands in searches. Coldwell Banker and Century21 are playing catchup.
Speaking of search, in a related post on Hitwise’s blog, Bill Tancer drills down into the connection between Google and Real Estate. Apparently, the Mountain View giant is responsible for 16% of the total traffic to real estate sites.
He also points out that Google Base is enjoying some success too – largely due to applications utilizing its database. Realogy’s 500,000+ listings are bound to help them out too (see Trulia Lands the Big One). According to Tancer, the following verticals are the most popular uses of Google Base.
- Employment 15.7%
- Real Estate 13.1%
- Auto Classifieds 11.9%
- Recipes: 7.1%
- Retail: 4.6%
- News: 3.4%
I’m still not entirely clear what Google’s end goal is with Google Base – but it’s clear its use for real estate is growing substantially.
