Oct 26 2007
Digging For The Truth About Real Estate Search Portals
The truth is worth digging for, even if the ground is hard and your shovel is dull.
Late last night I put up a post entitled, “Craigslist Delivers Viewers In Large Numbers.” It was based on server data that I collected over a week ago and I had been staring at ever since. The numbers indicated more incoming links from Craigslist than Realtor.com and Trulia and other Web 2.0 search portals. The numbers were so cartoonishly disproportionate that they left me scratching my head and asking a lot of questions.
So I decided to put the numbers up and ask the questions in public.
The answers, in part, were staring me right in the face and I was just too close to the data to see them. Jeff Weir, from Tour The Triad, pointed out what is now obvious about the numbers. The way Craiglsist displays information automatically generates a referring link, because all of the information is being pulled from our servers. This is not true of Realtor.com or Trulia. They provide a good deal of information about a home that is coming from their servers, not ours.
So I pulled the post down.
I’m not interested in sensationalism or jumping to conclusions based on opinions. And I’m definitely not interested in making false claims about anything. The numbers, interpreted incorrectly, could have cast a bad light on Realtor.com, Trulia and others. I’ve never pulled a post down before, but I want to be accurate. Even if I look stupid (like a dull shovel) in the process.
The way Craigslist pulls data from our servers doesn’t answer all of the questions, however. For example, why are the number of referring hits so low for Trulia and other Web 2.0 portals? But more importantly, the questions that need to be answered may never be answered by looking at anyone’s server logs, let alone ours. They can only be answered by you, the real estate agent.
If one website generates more traffic than another, what does that mean?
- What are the likely effects on visits to the home?
- What is the likely impact on contacts with the listing agent?
- Does this increase the likelihood of sales or new client prospects?
- Does this mean anything to the bottom line?
I’d love to find out. For that, I’m going to need some help.
If you post listings to all of the above, Realtor.com, Craigslist, Trulia, etc., I’d like to hear from you. Which sites are moving the needle for you? Tell us what is working and what is not working and why. I think the information is worth digging for.
Jeff I found when I put a full flyer such as Vflyer or Postlets I got ZERO traffic to my own website. I am sure the listings did get looked at but there was no reason for the consumer to click on over to my site for any more information. When I put a very basic listing with no photos I received a great deal of traffic. The house might not be for them but at that point I had them on my site and they would then use my IDX search to look at other homes.
I have a couple of listings. I am going to try an experiment with RES flyers and a plain vanilla listing on Craigslists and track the numbers for a few weeks and see what happens. As I have just signed up for RES I want to see what happens with your flyers. I have never seen traffic from Truila except from Truila Voices. I think less than 10 unique visitors this year. None from my listings on there and I have had something on there for 6 solid months this year. I don’t enhance my Realtor.com listings so I really have no data on that one.
I do think Craigslist gets more traffic than Trulia. For example doing a search for Albuquerque Real Estate - Realtor.com is #9, Craigslist shows up as #12 while Trulia is #395. For Albuquerque NM Real Estate - Craigslist is #3, Realtor.com is #5 and Trulia is #77. Now for comparison one of my sites shows up at #13 and #10 respectively. I will see more traffic than Trulia will!
Jeff - as you know I like facts and numbers
In my own experience my listings generate more traffic on Craig’s list. I get more showing becasue of craigs list and more clicks on my blog and web site because of Craigs list. Way more than I get from Trulia, and Realtor.com. As far a what it means . . it means that more people who are looking for homes visit my web sites. these are the kind of visitors that I want. I have never sold a home to a buyer that came through Craig’s list. Part of the reason might be becasue serious buyers have Realtors or are looking for one.
I have some good numbers for you. I can put together some reports if you are interested.
realtor.com is a real disappointment to real estate agents. I do many real estate sites and track almost everything that goes on and the traffic coming from realtor.com is pitiful at best.
Granted that might just be in this area…
Hi Jeff, Kelly at Trulia here. We appreciate the feedback you’re getting on this topic and I wanted to jump in to add my $0.02. Our business model has always been designed to direct traffic to broker and agent Web sites. In fact, we recently announced that we are the 1, 2 or 3 referring domain to 12 real estate companies nationwide (http://www.truliablog.com/?p=207). But we need to do a better job specifically for agents. We are currently working on a product (shhh…) that will enable us to do just that.
Details to come soon! Stay tuned.
Greetings,
Love what you do! Stats from a 3rd party source useful to me.. please keep digging.
My feeling and experience say Realtors are over sold underperforming products. I actually get phone calls from our listings on Craigslist! Greatest results are actually free! Imagine that. We have the highest internet taffic in our area. So I can speak with some auhority.
My feelings: Realtor.com’s own greedy business model has made them irrelevant almost as much as print media. Two years ago they were big, now I think most of there traffic is agents looking at there own listings. My research says people are shopping more through local agents sites for information… Second to it is Craigslist.
Can you back me up?
Best Regards!
Scott
I used to work for Realtor.com years ago. So i know how they work and how they count things. They count everything they can to get higher numbers.
The only thing i count is things like this…
visit http://www.magicvalleyrealty.com and see how many listings have been shown in the last few days. ( 10743 ) Properties Viewed Since October 17th, 2007 at 6:24pm
This is full details on the property. I am not counting the 10 per page search results like realtor.com used to or still does. This doesn’t account for the times the property may have been featured on the home page or printable flyers or virtual tours.
Just full details pages…
I track results and realtor.com doesn’t give my clients results so none of them pay to be included on their site and in their marketing.
I will find a company that has a realtor.com package and see how much traffic it refers and post some numbers on here next.
Ashley… very interesing. I’d very interested to hear the results of your test!
Teresa… “way more” is actually a statistically significant amount.
Brian… I’d LOVE to see your numbers. I will be contacting you.
Kelly… thank you so much for dropping in. I was hoping you would. When you can stop putting fingers to lips, come back and let us know about the new product.
Scott…. we get tons of referring links from local realtor sites. In aggregate, far more than from any single search portal. I may go take a closer look and see if I can’t quantify the difference.
Jeff, Since I do this stuff all day everyday for clients I have to say I have noticed very interesting statistics, coming off of several different platforms that I submit to Craigslist.
For example, I have used V-flyer and Postlets, as well as the Single Property Websites (like Agency Logic), to see what sort of difference in views we get. Craigslist is by far the choice for generating more website traffic.
Earlier this summer I had a client with a single property website that when syndicated to Craigslist, had almost 400-1000 views in 2 days. We would never hit that kind of traffic on Realtor.com or Trulia.
Jeff, I have wondered, specifically about the differeing numbers in Craigslist list when compared to Trulia as well - especially since using the flyers. I have been surprised my Trulia numbers have not gone up some from the res flyers publication thingy. I will look at my own on there and see if I can see anything that pops out at me.
Laura… great information. Thank you.
Steve… I’d love to see some hard numbers if you find some.
Jeff - fantastic analysis. Thanks for sharing!
Jeff - In looking at many of your comments it seems like Craigslist is doing very well for bringing traffic to many peoples websites. I have not found this to be the case in my market (Massachusetts). I am wondering if the site does better in one part of the country over another? Also is the traffic price range dependant? I have found when advertising there that I have never received a lead for a home priced over $350,000. Are the leads people are getting from lower priced homes?
Two years ago high priced was selling, the nitch in my market is moderate to low prices… Few are even looking at the higher end, unless it is unique, let the other agents spend the time consuling their clients. It is hard enough to move things priced right. What is your presentation on Craigs? Are you using flyers?
I just made an appointmet from the Real Estate Shows link for schedule a showing… Thank You… Text message link next?
Jeff, Since I do this thing every day for my clients I have to say I have noticed very interesting statistics, coming off of several different platforms. For example, I have V-flyer and Postlets, as well as the resortscape, to see what sort of difference in views we get. Though it seems Craigslist is by far the choice for generating more website traffic. However, even go through this blog you may find it quite interesting(http://www.resortscape.com) . Thanks a lot, buddy, Please keep up the good work..
Hello Jeff, I have found Craigslist to generate far more traffic to my website and listings on that website than any other single source. However, Google Analytics says that Craigslist traffic has a higher bounce rate than some of the other sources, such as AR and Localism.
In our market we’ve sold homes to buyers who have found the home or us on Craigslist AND we have had Sellers like the fact we advertise there as well.
Google Alerts is also reporting my posts to Craigslist, which I think means that the Google Bot does not care that the “nofollow” tags are being added to any embedded links.
Thanks!