Earlier this year we took our first few looks at the UK property portal market. It’s now time to update what is happening with UK property portals.
What the numbers show is that Rightmove continues to be the clear leader in the UK market. Its leadership position is similar to that of realestate.com.au in Australia and iproperty.com.my in the Malaysia where there is a large gap to the second place player.
Of particularly interesting note is that Zoopla has established itself as the clear #2 player while FindAProperty and PrimeLocation have slipped backwards since February. Clearly the merger of TDPG and Zoopla couldn’t have come at a better time for TDPG.
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 rightmove.co.uk accounts for 66% of the total mins spent looking at property across the top 10 sites. Zoopla is in second place with 12% of the total mins spent looking at property just slightly ahead of FindAProperty with 11%. The other major site is Primelocation with 6% of total time on site.
| TToS | % TToS | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 485.7 | 67.6% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 85.3 | 11.9% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 77.9 | 10.8% |
| primelocation.com | 41.6 | 5.8% |
| nestoria.co.uk | 6.5 | 0.9% |
| foxtons.co.uk | 5.0 | 0.7% |
| globrix.com | 5.0 | 0.7% |
| your-move.co.uk | 4.3 | 0.6% |
| mouseprice.com | 3.5 | 0.5% |
| homes.trovit.co.uk | 3.3 | 0.5% |
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
Rightmove continues to dominate the UK property portal landscape with 2.4x the number of unique users than number 2 placed Zoopla. Findaproperty is close behind Zoopla with Primelocation in 4th place. Compared to the February numbers, Zoopla has overtaken Findaproperty while Barratthomes.co.uk (a developer site) has dropped out of the top 10 and Foxtons.co.uk is now in 10th place.
| UV (users) (m) | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 6.20 |
| zoopla.co.uk | 2.60 |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 2.40 |
| primelocation.com | 1.20 |
| nestoria.co.uk | 0.43 |
| globrix.com | 0.39 |
| mouseprice.com | 0.35 |
| home.co.uk | 0.32 |
| homes.trovit.co.uk | 0.27 |
| foxtons.co.uk | 0.24 |
Note: UV = Unique Visits
Since February, only Zoopla has managed to maintain its Unique Visitor numbers while Findaproperty and Primelocation are down significantly.
| Unique Visits (users) (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 6.2 | 6.7 | -7.5% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 2.6 | 2.6 | 0.0% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 2.4 | 2.9 | -17.2% |
| primelocation.com | 1.2 | 1.5 | -20.0% |
When looking at visits to the top 10 sites, Rightmove clearly the leader attracting 56% of the visits to the top 10 UK property portals. With just under 4x the visits of second place Zoopla, it is clear to see why Rightmove ranked 10th in on the world’s most dominant portals list.
| Visits (m) | % Visits | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 31.00 | 56.4% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 8.00 | 14.5% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 7.30 | 13.3% |
| primelocation.com | 3.90 | 7.1% |
| nestoria.co.uk | 1.00 | 1.8% |
| globrix.com | 1.00 | 1.8% |
| mouseprice.com | 0.78 | 1.4% |
| home.co.uk | 0.75 | 1.4% |
| homes.trovit.co.uk | 0.65 | 1.2% |
| foxtons.co.uk | 0.63 | 1.1% |
Interestingly, if we look at the comparison between February and May this year, Rightmove has managed to maintain its visit numbers while Findaproperty is off significantly.
| Visits (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 31.0 | 31.0 | 0.0% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 8.0 | 8.1 | -1.2% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 7.3 | 8.6 | -15.1% |
| primelocation.com | 3.9 | 4.1 | -4.9% |
When looking at frequency of visits the top 4 stay the same with the only slight change in PrimeLocation moving up the list to second place, confirming the popularly held view of them having a loyal readership base. Rightmove continues to dominate and in fact has increased its frequency of visit from 4.6x to 5x since February this year. Zoopla and FindaProperty have remained the same.
| Frequency | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 5.0 |
| primelocation.com | 3.3 |
| zoopla.co.uk | 3.1 |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 3.0 |
| s1homes.co.uk | 3.0 |
| newhomesforsale.co.uk | 2.7 |
| foxtons.co.uk | 2.6 |
| globrix.com | 2.6 |
| taylorwimpey.co.uk | 2.6 |
| your-move.co.uk | 2.4 |
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.
Once again we see that Rightmove accounts for 76% of all page impressions consumed by visitors to the top 10 sites. In fact this is more than the next 9 combined. Rightmove had 8.4x the number of page impressions when compared to the second placed site – Zoopla
| PI (m) | % PI’s | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 670.0 | 75.6% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 80.0 | 9.0% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 66.0 | 7.4% |
| primelocation.com | 38.0 | 4.3% |
| nestoria.co.uk | 9.0 | 1.0% |
| foxtons.co.uk | 6.8 | 0.8% |
| home.co.uk | 4.3 | 0.5% |
| globrix.com | 4.2 | 0.5% |
| your-move.co.uk | 4.2 | 0.5% |
| homesonview.co.uk | 3.5 | 0.4% |
When looking at trends, all of the top 4 property portals in the UK are down on traffic when compared to February. However, the most worry signs are for FindaProperty and Primelocation, both of whom are off significantly.
| Page Impressions (m) | |||
| May-12 | Feb-12 | Change | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 670.0 | 730.0 | -8.2% |
| zoopla.co.uk | 80.0 | 88.0 | -9.1% |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 66.0 | 80.0 | -17.5% |
| primelocation.com | 38.0 | 45.0 | -15.6% |
When looking at page impressions per visit, Rightmove continues to top the list. Zoopla has around half the page impressions per visit while FindaProperty has even less again. Interestingly, the gap between Rightmove and the second place Foxtons has increased slightly from February. Overall, the number of page impressions per visit is down slightly for all players when compared to February.
| PI/Visit | |
| rightmove.co.uk | 21.6 |
| foxtons.co.uk | 10.8 |
| homesonview.co.uk | 10.6 |
| zoopla.co.uk | 10.0 |
| s1homes.co.uk | 10.0 |
| primelocation.com | 9.7 |
| homes24.co.uk | 9.1 |
| findaproperty.co.uk | 9.0 |
| nestoria.co.uk | 9.0 |
| newhomesforsale.co.uk | 8.8 |
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What a load of nonsense this analysis is. Do you not realise that most of the figures you quote for Rightmove are massively and falsely inflated by their backend agent tool Rightmove+ and havenothing to do with consumers. It is why they show so strongly on page impressions, time on site, etc. Would have thought that a site that reports on portals would understand the difference between consumer traffic and non-consumer. Rightmove is not nearly so far ahead of rest when you take that out. I used to work there, so I know the figures!
David
Thanks for the email.
Lets have a look at what you talk about. Rightmove+ is the back end tool for advertisers. Now there are 18,276 advertisers on Rightmove (as at 31/12/11) and there are around 60,000 estate agents in the UK.
Lets assume that every estate agent uses Rightmove+ and they log in every day, therefore there would be 1.8m visits to Rightmove+ each month. Lets call it 2m for argument’s sake. This would reduce visits to the site from 31m to 29m – still substantially more than the 8m to Zoopla and therefore not changing the overall message.
This brief analysis doesn’t take into account the usage of Zoopla Pro, a similar product to Rightmove+, by estate agents.
To respond to your comment about understanding consumer and non-consumer traffic. We do understand the different. The problem is getting accurate, comparative performance. In addition, in no market does the traffic from the industry (advertisers) make a material difference to the overall numbers.
It is hard to see an site (or combination of sites) mounting a serious short or medium term challenge to Rightmove.
Simon Baker