In a nearly decade old race, three competitors have emerged to dominate the real estate search space, and practitioners are always wondering who is in the lead, and where they should invest their money, hoping that traffic and eyeballs equal leads. Agree or disagree with that logic, it is certainly how many professionals gauge where they spend.
According to new comScore data, Zillow is in the clear lead, but garnering attention is the fact that Realtor.com has reclaimed the number two spot for the first time since April 2013. The data presented below accounts for both mobile and desktop visits.
Total unique visitors
ComScore data reveals that the total number of unique visitors to Zillow.com is 42.8 million for March 2014, while Realtor.com had 22.3 million unique visitors, and Trulia.com saw 21.4 million unique visitors, putting R and T neck in neck.
Total page views
In March, Zillow had a whopping one billion total page views, while Realtor.com pulled ahead to 537 million total page views, and Trulia lagged with 364 million total page views.
Average page views per visitor
According to comScore, Trulia saw 17 page views per visitor, while Realtor.com has 24 page views per visitor and Zillow took the top spot with 25 page views per visitor, putting Zillow’s and Realtor.com’s sites in nearly a dead heat.
Average minutes per visitor
Another metric where Zillow and Realtor.com are currently competitive is the average minutes a visitor spends on their site. Zillow visitors spend 31.8 minutes per visitor, Realtor.com visitors spend 29.6 minutes, and Trulia visitors spend 16.9 minutes, all of which are much higher than the national average in an era of declining time on site.
Measuring individual sites versus networks
Although each of these companies has other sites in their network, looking strictly at their individual websites gives an accurate depiction of what consumers are doing when they are strictly home shopping on each site rather than reading news on a partner site or using an ancillary app under the company umbrella. Although Zillow has appeared to have pulled ahead, the action behind the lead horse is becoming quite interesting.
