The 10 largest real estate listing portals are capturing nearly half of all nonmobile traffic to U.S. real estate-related websites, according to aggregate Web visit metrics compiled by Experian Marketing Services (formerly Experian Hitwise).
The top 10 real estate websites captured 42 percent of total visits in the space during January, with Zillow (9.17 percent market share), Trulia (7 percent) and Realtor.com (6.09 percent) leading the pack.
Experian, which measures total visits to a site from desktop computers, not unique visitors or traffic from mobile devices, reported a total of 482 million visits to real estate sites in January, a 12-month high.
Along with Yahoo Homes, No. 4 in January with 5.5 percent market share, Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com have filled the same top four relative spots in terms of website market share since June 2012, when Trulia leapfrogged Yahoo Homes and Realtor.com to capture the No. 2 spot, which it hasn’t relinquished since.
Top 10 most-visited real estate-related websites in the U.S. for January 2013*
| Rank | Website | Total visits | Visits share |
| 1 | Zillow | 44.19 million | 9.17% |
| 2 | Trulia | 33.70 million | 7.00% |
| 3 | Realtor.com | 29.32 million | 6.09% |
| 4 | Yahoo Homes | 26.48 million | 5.50% |
| 5 | FrontDoor Real Estate | 26.14 million | 5.43% |
| 6 | Homes.com | 17.98 million | 3.73% |
| 7 | MSN Real Estate | 7.17 million | 1.49% |
| 8 | Rent.com | 7.12 million | 1.48% |
| 9 | AOL Real Estate | 6.56 million | 1.36% |
| 10 | Apartment Guide | 5.89 million | 1.22% |
Source: Experian Marketing Services. *Excludes traffic from mobile devices.
The real estate-related websites in the top 20 most-visited in January include, in order from No. 11 to No. 20: MyNewPlace (1.15 percent), ZipRealty (1.13 percent), MSN House and Home (1.11 percent), HomeAway (1.1 percent), LoopNet (1.04 percent), Apartments.com (0.94 percent), ForRent.com (0.85 percent), Redfin (0.83 percent), Re/Max Real Estate (0.83 percent), and HAR.com (0.74 percent).
The top-spot rankings are complicated by agreements Zillow and Realtor.com (and Homes.com) have with other websites.
Zillow exclusively powers for-sale and for-rent listings on Yahoo Homes, but doesn’t include visits to the Yahoo site in its own Web metrics tally using Google Analytics, which, it reported in February, approached 46 million unique visitors in January. That metric included traffic from mobile devices and visitors to recently acquired map-based, rental-focused listing portal HotPads and rental platform RentJuice (now Zillow Rentals). Zillow refers to the sites it powers and Yahoo Homes as the Zillow Real Estate Network.
HGTV’s FrontDoor Real Estate, which joins the Zillow Real Estate Network on April 1, captured the fifth spot with 5.43 percent of traffic in January, after a 4.68 percent jump in the month — the largest for any real estate-related site. But it’s not clear how much of that promotion-dependent traffic will be maintained in the new relationship.
FrontDoor’s Web traffic shifts dramatically in conjunction with home-giveaway sweepstakes its parent company Scripps Networks LLC promotes on HGTV television shows, driving users to register, up to once a day, on HGTV.com and FrontDoor.com. On Feb. 15, for example, HGTV concludes a sweepstakes for a new home, which may have spiked FrontDoor’s numbers up in January; in December’s Experian metrics, it ranked No. 20 and in November, No. 56.
"It’s a nice feather in Zillow’s cap," said Gregg Larson, founder and CEO of Clareity Consulting Inc., pointing out FrontDoor’s semiconsistent top 10 nationwide Web traffic status throughout last year.
Realtor.com powers for-sale and for-rent listings on MSN Real Estate, No. 7 on Experian’s January ranking with a market share of 1.49 percent. Realtor.com operator Move Inc. also supplies a separate set of listings to AOL Real Estate — No. 9 with a market share of 1.36 percent in January — through a subsidiary, ListHub.
Homes.com, No. 6 on January’s Experian list, also powers large franchisor Re/Max’s home search, No. 19 of the most-visited real estate-related websites in January.
These types of agreements, given the challenge by third-party portals of maintaining accurate and somewhat-complete listing inventories, could become more common. "I think we’re going to see more consolidation in the online listings space this year," wrote 1000watt Consulting co-founder Brian Boero on his blog about the recently announced Zillow/FrontDoor deal.
If the portals’ networks are taken into account, the rankings shift. Zillow’s network captured nearly 15 percent of traffic in January (14.67 percent), followed by Realtor.com (8.94 percent) and Trulia (7 percent). Together, the three largest networks captured nearly 1 in 3 visits to real estate-related websites (30.6 percent).
Top 3 most-visited real estate-related website networks in the U.S. for January 2013*
| Rank | Network or website | Visits share |
| 1 | Zillow Real Estate Network^ (Zillow and Yahoo Homes) | 14.67% |
| 2 | Realtor.com network (Realtor.com, MSN Real Estate and AOL Real Estate) | 8.94% |
| 3 | Trulia | 7.00% |
Source: Experian Marketing Services. *Excludes traffic from mobile devices. ^Excludes traffic from HotPads.com.
Experian segments U.S. markets by "demographic market area" (DMA), which show slight, sometimes big, differences in real estate-related website market share rankings compared to the national metrics. Each month, Inman News will highlight the top 10 most-visited real estate-related sites in a different, big market. This month, the featured market is Atlanta, where a brokerage, Coldwell Banker Atlanta, and three multiple listing service sites — First Multiple Listing Service and the membership- and consumer-facing websites of Georgia Multiple Listing Service — cracked the top 10.
Top 10 most-visited real estate-related websites in Atlanta for January 2013*
| Rank | Website | Visits share |
| 1 | Zillow | 8.06% |
| 2 | Trulia | 7.46% |
| 3 | First Multiple Listing Service | 5.40% |
| 4 | Realtor.com | 4.91% |
| 5 | Homes.com | 4.40% |
| 6 | Yahoo Homes | 4.28% |
| 7 | FrontDoor Real Estate | 3.93% |
| 8 | GAMLS.com | 3.43% |
| 9 | Georgia Multiple Listing Service | 2.54% |
| 10 | Coldwell Banker Atlanta | 1.53% |
Source: Experian Marketing Services. *Excludes traffic from mobile devices.