Analysis - Traffic to UK Property Portal Sites (August 2008)
The ComScore numbers are out for August 2008 and all sites are down month on month and more importantly year on year. rightmove.co.uk continues to be the stand out leader in the market with 2.4m UV’s with findaproperty.co.uk in second place with 1.3m UV’s and propertyfinder.com in 3rd place with 1.1m UV’s.
| Unique Visitors | Aug-08 |
| Real Estate Category | 7,572 |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,400 |
| FINDAPROPERTY.COM | 1,304 |
| PROPERTYFINDER.COM | 1,123 |
| PRIMELOCATION.COM | 929 |
| NESTORIA.CO.UK | 508 |
| THINKPROPERTY.COM | 414 |
| UKPROPERTYSHOP.CO.UK | 377 |
| HOMESANDPROPERTY.CO.UK | 321 |
| HOMESONVIEW.CO.UK | 300 |
| HOTPROPERTY.CO.UK | 296 |
| ZOOPLA.CO.UK | 261 |
| GLOBRIX.COM | 253 |
| OURPROPERTY.CO.UK | 232 |
| FISH4HOMES.CO.UK | 214 |
Source: ComScore MediaMetrix August 2008
However, deeper analysis of the top three sites shows that although the UV gap may not be much, the frequency, total visits, total minutes, and page impression gap is much larger with rightmove.co.uk having over 6 times the number of page impressions as second placed findaproperty.co.uk. In fact rightmove.co.uk alone accounts for over 40% of all page impressions from UK real estate sites.
| UV’s (000’s) | Freq. | Visits (000’s) |
Min / Visit | Total Min (MM) | Page Imp (MM) | |
| REAL ESTATE SEGMENT | 7,572 | 3.3 | 24,988 | 9.3 | 232 | 488 |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,400 | 3.3 | 7,920 | 11.7 | 93 | 207 |
| FINDAPROPERTY.COM | 1,304 | 1.8 | 2,348 | 9.6 | 23 | 33 |
| PROPERTYFINDER.COM | 1,123 | 1.5 | 1,685 | 5.8 | 10 | 16 |
Source: ComScore MediaMetrix August 2008
Some people will look at the month on month variations and draw conclusions however this can be affected by seasonality, the amount of PPC spend and even short term marketing campaigns. Therefore it makes more sense to do some deeper analysis by looking at the year on year growth of the sites. As you can see, all of the top 4 major sites are down year on year with findaproperty.co.uk dropping less than the rest.
What is interesting is that below the big 4 there are two groups emerging - the second tier old school sites and the young turks. The second tier old school sites all dropped dramatically year on year - e.g. thinkproperty.com decreased 44%, homesonview.co.uk decreased 46% and so on while the young turks (nestoria.co.uk, globrix.com and zoopla.co.uk) all emerged from obscurity to be taking the place of the second tier old school sites. However there is still a long way to go for them to really take on the big 4.
| Aug-08 | Aug-07 | % Change | |
| Real Estate | 7,572 | 9,291 | -19% |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,400 | 3,404 | -29% |
| FINDAPROPERTY.COM | 1,304 | 1,455 | -10% |
| PROPERTYFINDER.COM | 1,123 | 1,469 | -24% |
| PRIMELOCATION.COM | 929 | 1,250 | -26% |
| NESTORIA.CO.UK | 508 | 196 | 159% |
| THINKPROPERTY.COM | 414 | 745 | -44% |
| UKPROPERTYSHOP.CO.UK | 377 | 511 | -26% |
| HOMESANDPROPERTY.CO.UK | 321 | 334 | -4% |
| HOMESONVIEW.CO.UK | 300 | 560 | -46% |
| HOTPROPERTY.CO.UK | 296 | 497 | -40% |
| ZOOPLA.CO.UK | 261 | 0 | New |
| GLOBRIX.COM | 253 | 0 | New |
| OURPROPERTY.CO.UK | 232 | 508 | -54% |
| FISH4HOMES.CO.UK | 214 | 569 | -62% |
Source: ComScore MediaMetrix August 2008
Over the last year, the overall UV’s to online real estate sites has decreased 19%, even through the complete internet market UV’s are up 12%. Therefore if we take the % change in real estate UV’s into account and look at what percentage of the total real estate UV’s are attracted to each site, what we see is that rightmove.co.uk has lost around 5%, findaproperty.co.uk gained 1%, propertyfinder.com lost 1%, as did primelocation. The big winner was not globrix.com but nestoria.co.uk which gained 5% of the UV market.
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