Portal combat


The big guys slug it out in the battle for portal prominence. Andrea Kirkby reports.


D


espite a dreary winter in the housing market, property portals are hitting new highs. January figures showed Rightmove beating last January’s record 25m daily


page impressions figure with 28.3m this time round, while Zoopla has also claimed a record, and Findaproperty was up 29 per cent in the month. Perhaps no-one is actually buying, but


the British public’s fascination with property prices continues, to judge from the fact that Rightmove is now the UK’s eighth most popular website. That puts it below Facebook and Google, but


16 APRIL 2011 PROPERTYdrum


(amazingly) above the BBC. Miles Shipside, Rightmove’s commercial director, claims “Rightmove is now typed into Google more often than the word ‘property’ itself.” One reason behind this good


performance from the top portals is that the market has consolidated around the top three – Rightmove way out ahead, and Zoopla and The Digital Property Group (TDPG) filling the next two slots. That consolidation took one major scalp recently as Google announced it was withdrawing from the property portals market. At the same time, the major portals have


taken share away from agents’ own sites. Zoopla’s CEO Alex Chesterman points out


that the top three portals’ traffic now exceeds that of the top 1,000 agents’ sites. The consumer clearly finds the portals’ ‘one stop shop’ useful. There are good profits being made, too.


Rightmove recently announced £81.6m in revenues for 2010, up 26 per cent, with an increase in pre-tax profit from £36.5m to £52.2m. That’s a higher profit than LSL, which made £25.8m in the same period. Zoopla claims to be profitable, while DMGT’s (Daily Mail & General Trust – TDPG’s owner) digital businesses grew profit in the financial year to October 2010 from £1m to £6m, though that includes jobs, motors and travel as well as TDPG.


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