UK property portal, Zoopla has announced a partnership with News International which will see it power the property search for times.co.uk, sundaytimes.co.uk and thesun.co.uk.
Under the terms of the deal, Zoopla.co.uk will exclusively take over powering the property search function for all three websites replacing Globrix
This is another interesting chapter in the UK online property scene as Globrix was half owned by News International between 2007 and 2009 but sold its stake back to the original founders. In January 2010, this stake was then on-sold by the owners to become part of the Digital Property Group’s stable of property sites which include primelocation.com and findaproperty.com.
News International, which is the UK newspaper publishing division of News Corporation, will begin promoting its new online property offering more extensively via its national newspapers. It is expected that the arrangement will begin in October.
This news comes on the back of the August 30 announcement that Zoopla had signed an exclusive deal with leading independent media group, Johnston Press plc, whereby it will power a new classified property platform for all of Johnston’s local websites.
Johnston Press publishes 18 daily newspapers including the Yorkshire Evening Post, The Scotsman and the Portsmouth News as well as 237 weekly newspapers and over 270 local websites, with a combined reach of over 13 million people each month.
Zoopla’s good news continued with their recent announcement of a 10.6% increase in in Unique Users for August 2011 as reported by Neilsen. This is ahead of a 6.6% increase by FindaProperty, a 1.2% decrease by Rightmove and an 8.8% decrease by Primelocation for the month according to their release.
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Zoopla’s growth strategy over the last 12 months has really paid divendends and they are no easily the second largest property portal behind Rightmove. The monthly growth statistics quoted shows that they are still managing to grow in a subdued property market when the majority of their competitors are seeing a decrease in traffic. Rightmove… watch out!
This is an interesting move by News International and shows that they are wanting to gain market share again in the property search and portal market using their flagship UK owned newspapers.