UK property portal and information website zoopla.co.uk will soon be integrated with propertyfinder.com, which Zoopla Limited acquired in August this year.
zoopla.co.uk is also celebrating double-digit growth in unique visitor figures for September as well as its win for Best UK Property Portal at the 2009 Daily Mail UK Residential Property Awards.
The integration plans will see propertyfinder.com along with the other websites in the Zoopla portfolio – hotproperty.co.uk and the recently acquired thinkproperty.com – become “powered by” zoopla.co.uk. Zoopla’s online agent directory ukpropertyshop.co.uk will remain separate at this stage.
Existing members’ fees will not be changed due to the integration, but agents will be offered the option to pay a fixed subscription for unlimited leads or to be charged on a pay-per-lead basis.
Zoopla states that there will be “significantly increased” marketing investment into the zoopla.co.uk brand from November onwards. Its agent members will soon be offered new features including premium placement options and appraisal leads from potential vendors. The company also plans to power property partnerships with UK websites such as Yahoo!, MSN, UpMyStreet and Virgin.
Zoopla is also celebrating an award win and increased visitor figures this month. zoopla.co.uk was recently named the Best UK Property Portal and awarded five stars at the 2009 Daily Mail UK Residential Property Awards. The portal will now represent the UK at the International Property Awards to find the World’s Best Property Portal.
zoopla.co.uk is quoting figures from Nielsen NetRatings that show a 16 percent rise in unique visitors for September compared to August. The figures also put propertyfinder.com’s month-on-month growth at 9 percent, while showing an 8 percent drop in visits to Digital Property Group websites.
Zoopla CEO Alex Chesterman had this to say about the results:
“The latest figures highlight that the UK portal space has now crystallised around three key players and we are very encouraged by our increasing market share. Despite the overall number of visitors to the leading portals remaining relatively unchanged in September, traffic to both zoopla.co.uk and propertyfinder.com grew strongly. The upcoming integration of our businesses will bring clear advantages to all our agent members, in addition to the growing traffic we are generating.”
The Nielsen figures quoted by Zoopla put rightmove.co.uk’s total number of unique visitors at 2,972,000 – an increase of just 0.07 percent from August. Digital Property Group’s websites follow with 2,118,000 visitors, which is a drop of 7.91 percent from its August total.
propertyfinder.com came in third with a total of 1,098,000 unique visitors, up from 1,009,000 in August. Finally, zoopla.co.uk is ranked fourth with 810,000 unique visitors for September, increased from 696,000.
Advertising Partner
-->
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
No offence to Zoopla, but how much of their traffic is direct? ie Google type-ins and direct zoopla.co.uk traffic. If this is less than 70-80%, to say that the market has “crystallised around 3 portals” is very premature. Unless the number of direct visitors is going up substantially, Google controls zoopla’s visitors who control their and if someone manages to do SEO better than the incumbents (definitely possible), then the market changes and quickly…..
Nothing new there
Always been three players that matter.
Rightmove
DMG GROUP
Propertyfinder.
Zoopla had to do the PF deal or face a long slow slog,As it is it wont be easy to displace the big two.