January’s Record Month Just a Seasonal Bump?

We’ve already reported on rising web traffic for some UK portals (rightmove.co.uk and globrix.com) throughout January and it seems the trend might be transatlantic. trulia.com has reported consumer engagement on the US property search engine is at an all time high.

The company blog states that after strong growth throughout 2008, trulia.com starts 2009 off with the best month in the company’s history.

“Since Trulia launched, we’ve always seen a seasonal bump in consumer interest at the beginning of the year. However, given the current state of the economy, we were not so sure if this year would follow the trend of the past,” said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. “In reality, consumers were engaged more than ever and we believe the dramatic increased engagement in January is a good indication that consumer optimism is on the rise.”

January was a record month for trulia.com across all key metrics. Consumers viewed 40% more pages per visit compared to a year ago and participated in the Trulia Voices community more than ever before with a 115% year-over-year growth in real estate questions, answers and blog posts.

The company also posted some interesting US data, gleaned from searches. The top 5 most popular searched cities were: Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY; Los Angeles, CA; and San Francisco, CA. And the top 5 most popular categories in Trulia Voices were: Home buying; Foreclosure; Market conditions; Home selling; and Financing.

We’ll have to wait until the end of February to see if the upward trend continues, or is just, as trulia.com’s CEO Pete Flint said, a seasonal bump in consumer interest.

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[image: flickr/mumutia]

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