Zoopla is claiming to be narrowing the gap on Rightmove after publication of traffic data from an independent website monitoring firm, Nielsen.
But another monitoring firm, Hitwise, has come up with an entirely different set of figures, showing that the gap between rivals Rightmove and Zoopla has remained largely unaltered over the last year.
The Nielsen data shows that the Zoopla websites clocked up 12,617,000 visits in August, up 17% from the 10,787,000 received by the brands, which include FindaProperty, Primelocation and Zoopla, in August last year.
However, Rightmove still remains comfortably ahead, according to Neilsen, with 14,333,000 visits during August, 0.39% up from 14,277,000 for August 2011.
Going on Neilsen figures, Zoopla says that this means that Rightmove’s visits have remained broadly flat, while visits to its own sites have grown.
However, Hitwise’s traffic figures show more than double the number of visits to Rightmove.
Rightmove, which normally prefers to talk about page impressions rather than visitors, referred EAT to the Hitwise figures, which show that Rightmove’s visits have in fact gone up 3.2% over the year, compared with a dip of 8.1% for FindaProperty, and a fall of 16.3 for PrimeLocation.
The Hitwise figures do, however, show a huge uplift of 26.1% for Zoopla itself.
The HItwise figures for this August show that Rightmove had total visits of 31,852,486 (up from 30,872,181 last August). The combined Zoopla Property websites of Zoopla, FindaProperty and Primelocation had a total of 20,146,839 – up 2.9% from its total of 19,574,389 in August 2011.
A Rightmove spokesman said the site would not comment on a single month’s results but said that Rightmove is the only property portal to be openly audited every year by ABCe. This involves handing over log files for independent analysis and verification, with the certificate then made publicly available.
Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman said of the Neilsen results: “Our market share continues to grow as a result of our investment in both marketing and our product.
“We delivered over two million inquiries to our members in August, and once our fully integrated platform is completed at the end of the month we look forward to providing even more value to our members.”
The Rightmove ABCe certificate can be seen here.
https://www.abc.org.uk/Certificates/18301535.pdf
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Comments
Rightmove v Zoopla
Kick off every day! Who's gonna win the Championship???
I read a thread on the money saving expert forum recently about how often people looked online for property. One woman admitted to being addicted to checking Rightmove, to the point that she was still looking for houses even though she had just moved into a new home she was perfectly happy with.
Says it all really!
...and the loser is?
Any agencies that rely on portals to win or sell houses.
“Summer sellers have had some very stiff competition, not only from competing sellers chopping their prices, but also from the Olympics extravaganza which has been more compelling for many than viewing property,” said Miles Shipside, Commercial Director at Rightmove.
As reported this very morning on PropertyDrum!
One story says numbers are up, another admits the truth!
The Duopoly are effectively saying that near enough 27 million people visited their sites during the School Holidays, Olympic games or Paralympics ( I know it could be 1 person visiting 27,000,000 times or combinations in between) but please ask yourselves how many viewings or offers resulted from all that traffic, not in total, what your competition did is not important in this debate. How many viewings or offers resulted for YOUR business?
In my experience once the schools shut down for the summer the only applicants to concentrate on are Teachers and families who need to be settled by September. August in a normal market is and always has been quiet (except for the MIRAS summer of 1988)
Wouldn't you think that these otherwise intelligent people would have the good sense to tone their figures down a bit to reflect the reality of the market especially when they have previously issued stories stating how all these factors were the cause of a fall in prices and transaction levels.
Lets guess at about 55,000 sales for August (just below the yearly average) even if all sales were down to just those two portals that is a success rate of 0.2%, in context with other forms of advertising, Junk mail and spam manages about 4%.
I think it shows up that the figures are not counting anything meaningful on a consistent basis and if correct when performance indicators are so very low it is time to review your advertising spend.
Valid comments.
This is all just ego posturing, hits are not a true indication of value to agents. There are loads of people looking in shop windows in my local high street, but the shops keep closing down because nobody in going in to buy anything.
The only meaningful stat would be how many 'true' leads they deliver to agents.
William & Paul,
Brilliant comments and summed up superbly. It's about time Rightmove stopped using Agent hits as part of their totals and we must start realising that these portals are no substitute for good old Estate Agency!
As the founder of the sport I am delighted to see two giants engaged in Willy Waving.
I am not sure quoting made up manipulated data at each other does the sport any good but hey ho let them fight it out.
Estate Agency is a People business not a Portal business
Easy to work out, agents are logging in and checking listings all the time, no one really logs in to zoopla or checks the listings. These sites that monitor traffic should not include ip addresses for all the portals members.