I was working on this post about real estate web stats when I discovered that Joel at Future of Real Estate Marketing beat me to it. That’s okay, because he does a much better job with the information than Inman did, and his blog doesn’t require a paid subscription. Be sure to read his post.
Hitwise, a company that tracks internet traffic across major industries, released its most recent set of statistics about the real estate industry. According to their stats, Realtor.com remains the #1 website. Rounding out the top 10 are Realtytrac, Homegain, Rent.com, RE/MAX, Yahoo! Real Estate, Zillow, Apartments.com, ZipRealty, and Move.com. Realtor.com maintains an 8.78% market share, more than twice that of #2 Realtytrac. It appears that for all its faults, Realtor.com is still the big dog on the block, despite all the growling from the Web 2.0 puppies.
In another interesting announcement, Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer reported on the Hitwise blog that the internet Leviathan that is Google has been driving 13% of all of its Google Base traffic to Real Estate. Coupling this data with the fact that Hitwise reports that Google is the source for close to 16% of ALL traffic to the Real Estate industry, leads me to believe that the Real Estate arm of the Leviathan is getting a bit stronger.
So what is the point of all this? Well, for me, it confirms something that I already knew– if I want to be around and practicing real estate in 10 years, I had better be showing up in Google. Like it or not, Google is here to stay, and if they continue to grow, they may end up being the best game in town. Will they ever replace the need for regional and local MLS systems? I doubt it. Sites like Google Base, Trulia, PropSmart, etc., may be decent alternatives for the consumer, but they are no where near what the professional agent requires.
MLS systems are safe, for now. Agents, on the other hand, had better pay attention to the changing internet landscape if they want to remain relevant and employed in the future.
Technorati Tags: real estate, realtor, charlottesville, virginia, google base, hitwise, realtor.com, web 2.0
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
What is Google Base had all of the fields agents currently have access to in their MLS systems? And what if it had MORE listings than the MLS by aggregating MLS and FSBO content? Would the MLS still be more valuable than Google?
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IF Google Base had all of those fields, and that is a pretty big “if,” then yes, it could certainly be a viable alternative to the MLS, especially if it didn’t come with all of the associated MLS fees.
I smell another post topic cooking . . .
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Realtor.com launched a new beta version of its property search last week. Do you have any opinion on how (or whether) this update will affect Realtor.com current “big dog” position in the field?
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