Battles Within UK’s Big 4 Portals

As we finish the first quarter of 2009, we thought it was about time we checked up on what the “Big 4” property portals in the UK have been up to: rightmove.co.uk, findaproperty.com, propertyfinder.com and primelocation.com.

Hitwise and Comscore figures both place rightmove.co.uk as clear number one in the UK. This comes as no great surprise, as the portal has led the way for the last 8 years.

What is interesting, is that the lead rightmove.co.uk has is still very strong. rightmove.co.uk leads with a market share of well over 50%, almost double the number of unique visitors of their closest competitor. Its competitors propertyfinder.com, and the Digital Property Group (DPG) owned findaproperty.com and primelocation.com, are left to battle for a rather distant number 2 position.

rightmove.co.uk certainly doesn’t rest on its laurels. The portal started the year with a bang – rolling out an £11 million “see more” marketing campaign. They’ve also altered their fee structure for Rightmove Overseas, revealed a record January, and released the results of their consumer confidence survey. There have also been rumours circulating of a takeover.

Mark Milner, CEO of DPG, has taken aim fairly and squarely at the number 1 position, commenting in a statement about the Countrywide deal that DPG are working to offer visitors the widest selection of properties in order to close the gap on the competition and become the UK’s number one property portal. With the launch of a new pricing plan late last year, and DPG’s much anticipated Insight function alongside big signings like Countrywide, things might be about to hot up with findaproperty.com and primelocation.com pushing up the rankings. Both portals also reported record traffic in the new year.

While primelocation.com has been relatively quiet on the PR front, DPG have pulled out all stops with findaproperty.com, and sealed two key partnerships in recent weeks: a huge marketing deal with burger giant McDonald’s; and being chosen as launch partner for Google Street View in the UK.

Meanwhile REA Group owned propertyfinder.com has begun the year as a strangely silent participant in the competition for top ranking. The only peep we’ve heard is a new editor installed to increase news and content across the company’s portals, and the Soviet-inspired “join the revolution” marketing campaign. We wonder what they may have up their sleeve?

To get a picture of the Big 4’s rivalry, propertyportalwatch.com tried plugging the big 4 into compete.com. It produced a graph of spider’s web complexity and stickiness (below).

Editor’s note: Thanks for all the comments from our readers – here’s a graph from Hitwise that might shed more light on the situation in the UK.

1. propertyfinder Battles to be Top Dog

   The UK property market might be slowing down, but the race to be top of the portal world never stops. Current leader of the pack is, of course, rightmove.co.uk. But all eyes are currently on propertyfinder.com as it claims increased web traffic in September has given it the much-coveted second place. ...

2. UK Portals Battle for Decreasing Traffic

   Internet traffic analyst, comScore has released November figures for the UK. These will be a Christmas present for some, and a source of discontent for others, as the race to claim the overall top spot for 2008 reaches its final stages, and overall real estate web traffic declines....

3. Luxury Property Portals on the Increase?

   In these challenging economic times you’d think property portals would be focussing on the cheap and cheerful, but the luxury end of the market still seems to be expanding. ...

4. zoopla.co.uk Challenges DPG Growth

   zoopla.co.uk is reporting comScore data, collected before the UK portal’s integration with propertyfinder.com, hotproperty.co.uk and thinkproperty.com, that puts its unique visitor numbers up nearly 13.87 percent in October compared to September. zoopla.co.uk’s statement quotes comScore figures that show a 0.57 percent drop in market leader rightmove.co.uk’s unique visitor numbers from September to October, an 11.33 percent drop for Digital Property Group’s findaproperty.com, a 1.09 percent drop at DPG-owned primelocation.com, and a 5.34 percent drop in unique visitors for propertyfinder.com....

5. Countrywide Renews With rightmove.co.uk

   UK estate agency group Countrywide plc has renewed its agreement to list all its offices on the UK's number one property portal, rightmove.co.uk, until 2012. ...