When News Corp acquired Move Inc., which operates Realtor.com for the National Association of Realtors, in November 2014, the worldwide conglomerate pledged to “turbocharge” Realtor.com.
The impact of the News Corp acquisition is still being felt by Realtor.com, which continues to see growth in its web traffic, but the company still has a long way to go to catch the websites of the Zillow Group.
News Corp reported its fiscal 2017 first quarter financial results on Monday, and contained within that report is a look at Realtor.com and how News Corp’s digital real estate segment is performing.
News Corp said Monday that based on Move’s internal data, Realtor.com’s average monthly unique users of its web and mobile sites was approximately 53 million for the fiscal first quarter of 2017.
News Corp said that its first quarter traffic represents a growth of 15% year-over-year.
Additionally, News Corp said that visitors to the mobile version of Realtor.com continues to drive audience growth and represents more than half of all the website’s unique users.
Compare that with the Zillow Group, which said last week that its websites saw more than 164 million average monthly unique users during the third quarter, representing an increase of 16% year-over-year.
The Zillow Group’s websites include brand like Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, HotPads and Naked Apartments.
At the time, Zillow said that its websites captured “nearly three quarters of total market share for the mobile-only real estate category.”
Earlier this year, News Corp reported that Realtor.com traffic grew in January to 50 million monthly unique users, or 34% growth year-over-year.
So Realtor.com is still growing, but so is Zillow. And Zillow’s websites still bring in more than triple the traffic of Realtor.com.
The comparison isn’t entirely apples-to-apples though, as Zillow Group is pulling traffic from several different consumer-facing brands, whereas Realtor.com is News Corp’s main property in the space.
But the traffic figures show that digital real estate is still growing and the competition for clicks is still fierce.
Overall, News Corp said that its digital real estate services segment posted “another strong quarter,” turning in an 18% year-over-year revenue increase.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson added that the company’s digital real estate services segment is on a “clear path to reshape the character of News Corp.”
Thomson also said that that Realtor.com returned “solid revenue growth” as the company “retooled” its product offerings. “We expect that momentum to accelerate this year and to contribute meaningfully to EBITDA,” Thomson said.
