Zillow Vs. Homegain - Who has the most traffic?
by Matt
A while ago I ran a report for my home comparing 4 online home valuation services. I seemed to have forgotten one called, homegain.com. Well Louis Cammarosano of homagain left some comments and a graph from compete.com that shows homegain traffic exceeds zillow traffic.
Yep, that definitely shows homegain.com gets more traffic then Zillow.com. End of story…or is it…
Like online home value sites, there are also many traffic sites. I went over to alexa.com to get to the bottom of this traffic controversy. I got some interesting results:
Wonder why this graph is completely opposite. I'm not going to go into how the 2 sites gets data and what algorithms they use, but I will give my 2 cents.
Homegain.com has tons of stealth sites…(Stealth sites capture leads, then sells them to agents) and Zillow has tons of widgets…(small tools realtors can add to their websites). I see far more google adword text ads for homegain. Actually I don't think I have ever seen a zillow banner, or text ad? please let me know where I find one.
Zillow is on the right track by creating an API to share their data. Their traffic is only going to increase because of it.
Tags:alexa traffic compete traffic homegain zillow
Popularity: 35% [?]
Good point; these site audience tracking services are notoriously unreliable (and that includes Alexa.)
A more important differentiator when considering Zillow’s traffic is its source — unlike most RE websites, Zillow’s audience is almost entirely “organic” — most visitors to Zillow come to the site because they are looking for “Zillow”.
This brand loyalty to Zillow.com as an authoritative source of Real Estate information is very valuable to our advertisers — and it explains why we can send business their way at a far lower cost than our competition can.
What that means for Louis is that Homegain should be advertising on Zillow.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:03 pmAccording to Hitwise, HomeGain was the second most visited real estate web site in 2006 (see below) and according to media metrix/comscore HomeGain ranks far ahead of Zillow in traffic as well.
Oh by the way HomeGain was the originator of the instant homevaluation tool and had it on its web site from 1999-2001.
Homegain recently brought it back its instant homevaluation tool at http://www.homegain.com and has been driving even more traffic to our site as a result.
What Zillow has done is take the original HomeGain concept, wrapped it in a big “Z” and tries to create the impression that they’ve created something new!
From: Hitwise [mailto:top10us@hitwise.com]
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 12:03 AM
To: lizzie.babarczy@hitwise.com
Subject: www.homegain.com is a Hitwise Top 10 Award Winner!
Hitwise Top10 Awards Program
Dear Jessica,
Congratulations! Hitwise is pleased to announce that www.homegain.com is a Hitwise Top 10 winner for 2006.
During the 2006 year, www.homegain.com ranked No. 2 by visits among all other U.S websites in the Hitwise Business and Finance - Real Estate category.
The Hitwise Top 10 Award recognizes websites from over 160 Hitwise industry categories that are leaders in their industry and brings with it the benefit of using the Hitwise Top 10 shield (pictured right).
If you would like to display the award shield on your website, please click on the image (or this link) and follow the instructions. To ensure that the purpose of the award is clear, display of the shield is permitted on the condition that a hyperlink to its explanation is included.
Again, congratulations. We look forward to hearing from you soon!
Best regards,
Lizzie Babarczy
June 15th, 2007 at 9:51 pmMarketing Director
Hitwise US
“HomeGain was the originator of the instant home valuation tool and had it on its web site from 1999-2001…Homegain recently brought it back its instant homevaluation”
Did you bring it back because of Zillow’s popularity? Why would you take down such a popular tool?
June 15th, 2007 at 10:02 pmI wasn’t at HomeGain when the decision was made to take it down. During my time at HomeGain since Jan 2005 (before Zillow) when I discovered we had such a tool I lobbied to bring the tool back.(I wasn’t alway the general manager) It took some work to bring it back and by the time it was ready Zillow had already launched.
June 16th, 2007 at 9:45 amThe millions of visitors to HomeGain.com come when they are ready to transact-either to buy or sell a home.
That is what makes our leads so valuable to our THOUSANDS of realtor customers.
Visitors to Zillow go to look up the value of Tony Soprano’s home or their neighbors home value.
Zillow is more entertainment than real estate “authority”.
Taking HomeGain’s 8 year old concept of online instant home valuations, funding it to the tune of $60 million plus and wrapping it all in a big “Z” doesn’t make it authoratative.
Fun yes, amusing yes too. Authoratative-now THAT’s funny.
No thanks David, HomeGain won’t be advertising on Zillow.
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:29 pmLouis, you need a blog on homegain. It’s easier to get your opinions out their on your own blog instead of comments on other blogs.
June 24th, 2007 at 10:57 amThanks Matt
You are right. We are working on a web redesign and blog. I’ll let you know when we are ready to go live.
Would appreciate your views on the new HomeGain blog.
June 24th, 2007 at 8:36 pmRegards
Louis
well if you want a good one, you would have us build it for you…
June 24th, 2007 at 8:38 pmHi Matt
June 27th, 2007 at 6:35 pmWe have a typepad prototype blog but would be interested in how we can improve. HomeGain is a part of CV real estate (a joint venture among the Tribune, Washington Post, Gannet and McClatchy news papers) which also includes Homescape and will be launching our blog soon. Please email me with information about your blogging services.
Regards
Louis
Louis Cammarosano referring to Zillow’s service wrote: “Fun yes, amusing yes too. Authoratative-now THAT’s funny.”
What is REALLY funny is that Mr. Cammarosano fails to point out that apart from being the first web site to offer an instant valuation tool, HomeGain also is notorious for being the first web site to be sued by its VERY OWN employees in a class action lawsuit (Zillow, ZipRealty, Trulia and HouseValues do not hold such distinction). For several years HomeGain purposely avoided paying overtime and denied meal breaks to hundreds of employees resulting in a class action lawsuit against the company. Is that how HomeGain became profitable Mr. Cammarosano? To view the PUBLIC court documents of this class action lawsuit against HomeGain please go to:
June 28th, 2007 at 1:22 pmhttp://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/fortecgi/fortecgi.exe?ServiceName=DomainWebService&TemplateName=index.html
Click on Case Summary and enter the case number: RG05246985. Any comments from HomeGain General Manager Louis Cammarosano?
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July 12th, 2007 at 12:44 pmohhh thanks, u r right.
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November 4th, 2007 at 3:16 pm[…] […]
June 7th, 2008 at 1:45 pm