Is Globrix Under Pressure in the UK?

9 Responses to “Is Globrix Under Pressure in the UK?”

1. MikeAtZoomf on November 6th, 2008 8:30 am
   

   I’m sure Daniel is talking about listing growth and not audience size. Listings growth via the old method (feeds) versus technology (crawling) is exponentially different. If you were to gather data on property portals listing growth year to year you’d see a huge difference between a portal and search engine.

   And yes, everyone likes to discuss the pros and cons of ComScore methodology. One thing I would like to know, does ComScore discount traffic that is purchased and if so, how? Zoopla and Thinkproperty, for example, buy a lot of traffic via Adwords. Is that discounted? It would be good to see HitWise data next to ComScore if anyone can dig that up from someone.
2. Steve Anderson on November 6th, 2008 10:48 am
   

   These figures seem innaccurate , look where the sites appear in google search rankings and some of these sites have only limited coverage of the UK housing market , so by default they must have a lot of people looking at the same houses over and over again. I wouldnt be so dismissive of Globrix with nearly 1 million properties on its site and the backing of NI its going to be a strong player over the next few years.As for the pay to list gang i agree with Dan that model is destined for the bin ………. just ask any agents what kind of deals they are currently being offered ,this is a market that is discounting to zero. With none of the pay to list portals (except RightMove) making any money,eventually the media groups will tire of pouring millions in to Google.
3. Simon Baker on November 6th, 2008 11:34 am
   

   Steve

   Thanks for your comments. A few thoughts from me.

   Firstly, if the figures are inaccurate for Globrix wouldnt they be equally inaccurate for the other sites? When i worked at the REA Group, the ComScore numbers for propertyfinder.com were often within 10% of the internal numbers we had.

   Secondly, while having heaps of listings is great (and certainly better than none), having sustained traiffic is far more important. The fact that traffic appears to be decreasing, even when listings are increasing, would worry me as the CEO.

   Thirdly, i am not sure that the backing of News International will come to much. propertyfinder.com is also 50% owned by News International and given the NI support of Globrix, the 50% backing is not adding value to the propertyfinder.com business. The real game is not in traditional media support but in how well you manage SEO / SEM / SMO to drive low cost traffic to the site.

   Finally, SEM does not drive all the traffic for the pay to list portals. It is a contributor to the overall traffic but no where near the only source. They all have strongly entrenched brands that will be very hard to dislodge.

   Simon Baker
4. Ian Parry on November 6th, 2008 1:35 pm
   

   I think as the ex-CEO of PropertyFinder you know how such reports can be used more for support than illumination - someone could be mistaken for thinking you are trying to damage our business Simon

   Using a single source to derive a conclusion about us being under “pressure” is quite a big leap of faith I think. Especially if you consider that we are the only site in this list that has the true search engine model where our traffic is deliberately limited in terms of page impressions (users search and click out to other websites to view the properties). The methodology used by Comscore looks at a sample of traffic to a site which then derives the various UV calculations and so forth - it is well known NOT to be uniform across sites within a sector, and the different user experience we offer does impact our score.

   The good news for us is that from the multiple measurement tools we have access to we can model our traffic quite accurately, and month on month (including August > September) our UV traffic is rising, as are the number of property clicks and user searches. To illustrate this further, if you were to quote Comscores competitor Hitwise your article would read rather differently - Hitwise data shows traffic has grown on Globrix, and the latest Hitwise figures put Globrix well within the top 10 out of the property portals /search engines.
5. m on November 6th, 2008 1:45 pm
   

   Simon
   Have to agree with your 3 points.
   This is a war of brand and smart SEO.
   Given that everyone can seek out an expert to improve SEO - clearly this appears to be a money game from all angles
   More spend on marketing = more brand awareness
   More money on SEO = best SEO brains
   Unless you have a decent revenue stream - funding and viability looks iffy - even for the existing powerbrand of Prime and Propertyfinder
   The trinity move is baffling to say the least, NI will get bored of Globrix, GMG have clearly re-evaluated the size of the prize on thinkproperty, DPG will we forced to move to one brand at some point and Propertyfinder ( will leave that to Simon )
6. Peter Duncan on November 6th, 2008 9:54 pm
   

   Simon

   I agree with your comments about SEO but I do not agree with your comments about Comscore. Globrix (and other sites like it in other verticals) are not like Propertyfinder or Primelocation in the way they generate pages therefore Comscore does not treat them in the same way. You really need to look at a range of tools to have a good idea of real traffic. The property portals have bankrupted themselves playing the comscore / hitwise stats game. Smartnewhomes has less traffic than any of them but is a highly profitable business. So what is more important buying traffic to appear successful or running a sustainable and profitable business?

   Also one very important point with all portals is that you need to look at real traffic. Thinkproperty at one point had 1.5M UU as it was spending a small fortune on SEM as other portals do. Once it stopped buying clicks the traffic virtually went away. Most portals spend huge sums to stay in the top 4. What would happen to their traffic if they stopped this spend? Propertyfinder lost £4Million last year at the end of a great 12 months in property so how will it keep spending on SEM in a depressed market?

   In my opinion unless you are Rightmove you are dead in the pay to list market. They all make losses despite millions of investment and now agents no longer want to pay…..
7. Simon Baker on November 6th, 2008 10:32 pm
   

   Peter

   You raise some good points in your comment. Perhaps it is now time for the sites in the UK to agree on a common measurement approach so that the advertisers can get a clear picture as to how each of the sites are going.

   In the Australian market, Nielsen NetRating has managed to create that common measurement approach with almost all sites are tagged with the NetRatings code and at any time all sites can get an accurate picture of how they are performaning against the competition.

   Given the amount being spent by everyone in the UK on promoting their sites it probably makes sense to move to a common measurement approach.

   Thoughts?

   Simon Baker
8. Steve Anderson on November 7th, 2008 5:18 pm
   

   I am with Peter , you need to look at real traffic .There are only a certain number of actual searches by region per month, thus in reality if the pay to list gang have all the agents agents offices signed up in that particular area , its the equivalent of recharging out what Google charges at 10 to 20 times what they charge.Is it any wonder that Right Move has a gross profit margin of 50+%. Agents are waking up to this. As thinkproperty discoved it basically did not have enough houses on its books to keep people comming back .As for SEO the biggest factor is in linking and some sites are far better positioned than others and this is already making an impact with the Google rankings.

   Is it not the case that agents have already voted for what they want ,Globrix is possibly the largest UK property site in terms of listings other than Right Move no one is near it , if the others dont have the listing people will soon tire of them , as i understand it there will be a lot of properties being withdrawn from pay to list sites and whilst i agree that the established brands do have the advantage there traffic will erode rapidly if they cant keep the agents properties on their site.

   Trinity Mirror, New Int, Guardian and very shortly a nother media group will announce its going free to list ……. the others will follow then it will be down how clever you are at retaining customers ,market coverage,applications,service and SEO not com score numbers.
9. Mike on November 7th, 2008 8:41 pm
   

   Steve
   I have to agree with your assessment of the situation.
   I would assume Trinity will be following the findaproperty local strategy which will cause DPG a real issue I think.
   Zoomf, Globrix and Thinkproperty are all now material moves - none which will necessary pay big dividends in the short term but definately disrupt.
   Trinity are an unknown quantity but have not impressed so far with their current portfolio. Globrix continue to be riding the PR wave. Thinkproperty have quite a few strategic options given their software connections, so prehaps are not that worried about consumer success.
   DPG and Rightmove will probably find themselves under more creative pressure now that the new breed of business model requires a new approach to revenue generation which could be very attractive / innovative towards the agent

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