zillow.com Drops, redfin.com Jumps

zillow.com chief operating officer Spencer Rascoff recently said he hopes to be able to confirm his website’s place at the top of the US market “within short order”. Looking at the latest Hitwise results, it seems Rascoff will have to wait at least another month.

After moving to the number two spot in November’s Hitwise rankings, and changing the order of the top four US real estate websites for the first time in over a year, zillow.com is now back to third place on the Hitwise list for December. realestate.yahoo.com has reclaimed its number two position under realtor.com, and ziprealty.com still sits at number four.

Along with zillow.com, trulia.com has also registered a drop in market share, moving down one place to seventh position. Home improvement professional website servicemagic.com took trulia.com’s place at number six.

December was a good month for apartments.com, which moved out of 11th place to join the top 10. mynewplace.com had even better figures, jumping from 13th to 11th position. remax.com wasn’t so lucky, dropping from number 10 to number 13.

The rest of the top 20 saw gains for quite a few real estate websites. Both forrent.com and apartmentguide.com moved up one place to take out 14th and 15th position respectively. listingbook.com moved up three places from 19th to 16th, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development website, portal.hud.gov, moved from 21st to 19th position.

Along with portal.hud.gov, two more websites joined the top 20, and did so in dramatic fashion. redfin.com managed to climb four places from 22nd to 18th, while rentals.com jumped from 25th to 20th position.

There was some good news for zillow.com: “zillow” was the second most popular search term for the four weeks ending 26 December for traffic to websites in Hitwise’s real estate category. “realtor.com” was the most popular search term.

Real estate websites entering the top 100 included homelistingsfinder.com, which moved from 107th to 95th place, and the California Association of Realtors’ website, car.org, which moved from 117th to 97th place.

29.09 percent of all visits to the “Business and Finance – Real Estate” industry went to the top 10 websites in December. 39.31 percent went to the top 20 websites and 68.54 percent went to the top 100 websites.

The average visit duration for visits to the “Business and Finance – Real Estate” industry was 9 minutes, 48 seconds. This is a minimal decrease from last months average visit duration of 9 minutes, 55 seconds.

The top 10 US real estate websites in terms of visits were:

1. realtor.com
2. realestate.yahoo.com
3. zillow.com
4. ziprealty.com
5. rent.com
6. servicemagic.com
7. trulia.com
8. homes.com
9. realestate.msn.com
10. apartments.com

1. Hitwise: zillow.com in Second Place

   zillow.com has edged into second place on the Hitwise list of top US real estate websites with a 3.43 percent market share over realestate.yahoo.com's 3.40 percent. The only other change amongst the top 10 was realestate.msn.com switching places with servicemagic.com to take out eighth position. servicemagic.com fell from sixth to eighth position last month....

2. loopnet.com Replaces redfin.com: Hitwise

   The top seven entries in the Hitwise list of US real estate websites remained unchanged during October, but there was movement within the top 20, with apartments.com up one position to take out tenth place, and redfin.com losing its spot at number 20 to loopnet.com. The results are a further boost for loopnet.com, which reported an 11 percent increase in unique visitors during the third quarter of this year based on comScore figures. The drop in visitors to redfin.com comes just after the US online brokerage announced a US$10 million round of funding along with major upgrades to its website. ...

3. zillow.com Moves Up Hitwise List

   For the first time in more than a year, Hitwise has recorded a change amongst the top four US real estate websites. The November rankings have zillow.com up one position to second place, replacing realestate.yahoo.com. November was an interesting month according to Hitwise, with a good deal of movement throughout the top 10. While ziprealty.com held steady at number four, both rent.com and trulia.com moved up one position to take out number five and six respectively. realtor.com still holds the number one spot....

4. Hitwise: servicemagic.com Bumps rent.com

   The September results are in from Hitwise, hotpads.com entering the top 100 US real estate websites list and home improvement professional website servicemagic.com rising two places in the top 10. ...

5. Hitwise Top Three Stable

   The Hitwise rankings for January show no change in the top three US real estate websites. realtor.com remains in the lead, followed by realestate.yahoo.com, with zillow.com in third place. rent.com, which was in sixth place in October and fifth for the previous two months, is now number four on the list. This bumps ziprealty.com out of its long-held number four spot....