Continued from Tuesday.
What about industry-favored Realtor.com?
Realtor.com offers fair competition, but lags behind its gargantuan rival. This past March, Zillow and Trulia had 75.4 million unique visitors, making it the most-trafficked real estate listing advertising website network. Realtor.com, the industry favorite, came in at less than half, 32.6 million. Though not as trafficked, the site does have benefits, among which are more accurate listing information and timely updates of listing status – at least according to Realtor.com (aka MOVE, Inc.).
How Google plays in
Google’s 2014 algorithmic change further muddies the waters. Though Zillow pays well for dominance in real estate listing advertising search results, the algorithmic change gives local search results – and local brokers – priority. Once local brokerage websites catch up to Zillow in quantity of data, the big fish might be in trouble. Data availability is increasing as web development costs decrease, making the market ripe for competition by these brokerages. Time will tell if sites like Zillow fall by the wayside to local agencies far preferred by home buyers and sellers.
The takeaway
Should you be advertising your listings on Zillow? More than 90 percent of home buyers use the internet to search for homes – so you should definitely be listing online. However you may want to wait for the growing pains to subside before you invest your hard earned real estate listing advertising dollars in Zillow. Today’s fickle technology users don’t have a whole lot of brand loyalty, which may pose a challenge to a mega-giant in a market where, all things equal, consumers prefer a local business over a national firm that serves customers up to the highest bidder.