Earlier this year we took our first few looks at the Australian property portal market. In that review, we saw that realestate.com.au dominated the Australian property portal market. Since February nothing has changed. In fact, the gap between realestate.com.au and domain.com.au has widened on the key metrics.
The dominance that realestate.com.au has in the Australian market is very similar to the dominance that rightmove.co.uk has in the UK. Both capture around 70% of the total time spent on the top 10 property portals, both have around 60% of the visits to the top 10 sites, and both have around 70% of the page impressions to the top 10 sites.
While we look at the rankings of the top 10 players through a number of metrics below, total time on site is probably the single best way to determine leadership at it combinations traffic and engagement. Total time on site takes into account visits (a combination of unique visitors and frequency) as well as what they do on the site once they are there – in this case average session duration.
On this measure we see that realestate.com.au accounts for 68% of the total mins spent looking at property across the top 10 sites. Domain is in second place with 18%. The remainder of the market is extremely fragmented with allhomes.com.au, a Canberra based site, in third place with just 3.5% of the total time spent on the top 10 sites.
| TToS (m) | % TToS | |
| realestate.com.au | 300.1 | 68.0% |
| domain.com.au | 80.6 | 18.3% |
| allhomes.com.au | 15.6 | 3.5% |
| reiwa.com.au | 11.3 | 2.6% |
| realcommercial.com.au | 8.7 | 2.0% |
| realestateview.com.au | 7.9 | 1.8% |
| onthehouse.com.au | 5.5 | 1.3% |
| raywhite.com.au | 4.8 | 1.1% |
| ljhooker.com.au | 3.6 | 0.8% |
| homehound.com.au | 3.2 | 0.7% |
Note: TToS = Total Time on Site (Visits x Average Session Duration)
All numbers in this document are prepared using Google Ad Planner’s May 2012 numbers.
Traffic
realestate.com.au had 3.5 m unique visitors (users) in May, more than double second place domain and nearly as much as the next 9 combined.
| UV (users) (m) | |
| realestate.com.au | 3.5 |
| domain.com.au | 1.6 |
| realestateview.com.au | 0.4 |
| onthehouse.com.au | 0.3 |
| realcommercial.com.au | 0.2 |
| homehound.com.au | 0.2 |
| allhomes.com.au | 0.2 |
| ljhooker.com.au | 0.2 |
| reiwa.com.au | 0.2 |
| thehomepage.com.au | 0.2 |
Note: UV = Unique Visits
When looking at the change between February and May this year, realestate.com.au has slightly increased the traffic to its site while traffic to domain.com.au has dropped significantly by 20%.
| Unique Visits (Users) (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| realestate.com.au | 3.5 | 3.4 | 2.9% |
| domain.com.au | 1.6 | 2.0 | -20.0% |
When looking at visits to the top 10 sites, realestate.com.au is clearly the leader attracting 60% of the visits to the top 10 Australian property portals. With just under 3x the visits of second place domain.com.au, it is clear to see why realestate.com.au ranked 13th in on the world’s most dominant portals list.
| Visits (m) | % Visits | |
| realestate.com.au | 18.0 | 60.6% |
| domain.com.au | 6.2 | 20.9% |
| allhomes.com.au | 1.1 | 3.7% |
| realestateview.com.au | 0.9 | 3.1% |
| reiwa.com.au | 0.8 | 2.7% |
| onthehouse.com.au | 0.7 | 2.3% |
| realcommercial.com.au | 0.7 | 2.2% |
| homehound.com.au | 0.5 | 1.7% |
| ljhooker.com.au | 0.4 | 1.5% |
| raywhite.com.au | 0.4 | 1.3% |
Interestingly, if we look at the comparison between February and May this year, realestate.com.au has dropped 5% while domain.com.au is down 13%.
| Visits (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| realestate.com.au | 18.0 | 19.0 | -5.3% |
| domain.com.au | 6.2 | 7.1 | -12.7% |
Allhomes.com.au has over taken realestate.com.au as the more frequently visited property portal in Australia. Frequency of visit for allhomes is up from 5.5x to 6.1x. realestate.com.au’s frequency of visit dropped by around 10% from 5.6x in February to 5.1x in May – potentially reflecting the time of year.
| Frequency | |
| allhomes.com.au | 6.1 |
| realestate.com.au | 5.1 |
| reiwa.com.au | 4.9 |
| raywhite.com.au | 4.0 |
| domain.com.au | 3.9 |
| realcommercial.com.au | 3.0 |
| century21.com.au | 2.9 |
| rent.com.au | 2.7 |
| realestateview.com.au | 2.6 |
| nestoria.com.au | 2.5 |
Engagement
The second measure of success is the level of engagement a site has with its users. This is best viewed through page impression, average page impressions per visit and average session duration.
realestate.com.au dominates the pages viewed in the market accounting for 66% of page views to the top 10 sites. Domain is in second place with 18%.
| PI (m) | % PI’s | |
| realestate.com.au | 280.0 | 65.5% |
| domain.com.au | 78.0 | 18.3% |
| allhomes.com.au | 28.0 | 6.6% |
| reiwa.com.au | 10.0 | 2.3% |
| realcommercial.com.au | 8.2 | 1.9% |
| realestateview.com.au | 6.2 | 1.5% |
| onthehouse.com.au | 4.7 | 1.1% |
| homehound.com.au | 4.6 | 1.1% |
| raywhite.com.au | 4.6 | 1.1% |
| ljhooker.com.au | 2.9 | 0.7% |
Between February and May, page views for realestate.com.au has remainded steady while domain.com.au’s page views dropped by 20%.
| Page Impressions (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| realestate.com.au | 280.0 | 280.0 | 0.0% |
| domain.com.au | 78.0 | 97.0 | -19.6% |
On a page impressions per visit basis, allhomes clearly leads the market with over 25 pages per visit – similar to February’s numbers. realestate.com.au’s pages per visit is slightly up over February while domain is slightly down.
| PI/Visit | |
| allhomes.com.au | 25.5 |
| realestate.com.au | 15.6 |
| nestoria.com.au | 12.7 |
| reiwa.com.au | 12.7 |
| domain.com.au | 12.6 |
| realcommercial.com.au | 12.4 |
| raywhite.com.au | 11.5 |
| homehound.com.au | 9.0 |
| century21.com.au | 8.3 |
| homesales.com.au | 8.0 |
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Would love to see this data on a state by state basis / I am in Wa and it would be great to get a better understanding of the local market . Thanks Peter
Hi Peter
I would love to get this data too however google ad planner doesn’t provide this level of detail
Your best bet would be ComScore however that does cost
Thanks
Simon Baker
Yay – go reiwa.com! In all lists despite only being a WA portal. Peter emailed me and I sent him a combination of Hitwise/Nielsen stuff regarding WA rankings.
keep up the good work Simon – loving the daily blog posts