The battle between Homestore and MSN HomeAdvisor was beginning to look like the Arms race. Before it went nuclear, Homestore had beaten all comers in terms of which site gets the most traffic. Citing Media Metrix numbers for years, Homestore was suddenly surprised in March when the data source named HomeAdvisor first in traffic over Realtor.com

Now, for the second month in a row, Homeadvisor has eclipsed Realtor.com again, this time with only a marginal lead, but it was enough to still rank it as the #1 home and real estate site on the Web, according to Media Metrix.

According to the data/traffic counting service, Homeadvisor drew 3.24 million unique users in April, while Realtor.com had 3.23 million users.

Homestore has publicly challenged Homeadvisor's methodology for submitting URLs to Media Metrix, which it claims unfairly counts non-real estate traffic garnered from the MSN site. Homeadvisor replies that under the same counting rules, Homestore collects traffic from sites that have little to do with its brand.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings home/work panel data, Homestore countered that Realtor.com had 4.36 million unique users in April, but did not disclose what the difference was in counting methodologies there were between Nielsen and Media Metrix to account for a million visitor differential.

Homestore then commissioned a Jupiter Media Metrix custom segment report which returned to March 2001 to analyze traffic directly relevant to homes for sale on Microsoft’s HomeAdvisor in order to provide a comparable number to Realtor.com, concluding that Realtor.com attracted 3.3 million unique users in March while HomeAdvisor’s “homes for sale” area drew only 1.5 million unique users in March.

Unaddressed by both companies is the slight decline in traffic, while other homebuying indicators, according to Steve Cook spokesperson for the NAR, are up. He says that NAR research personnel predict a new record in home sales this year.

Despite declining visitors to both sites, Homeadvisor says that lead delivery to agents is up, and that puts the contest on a whole new playing field.

No turning back

The war isn't over yet. Now Homeadvisor is bringing out the nuclear weapons. That's the explosive impact that lead generation disclosure may have on future sales and ad deals for all real estate portals.

Homeadvisor says that it is delivering 7,300 customers per day to its real estate partners, almost a 50 percent increase in leads over the past three months, and the site plans to continue announcing leads to key broker partners.

According to a previous interview with Ian Morris, HomeAdvisor.com's product unit manager, leads are click-through to agent Web sites or e-mails that are attached to the listings that are submitted to Homeadvisor by MLS organizations and brokers. By that criteria, Homeadvisor claims to send an average of 95 customers per day to Douglas Elliman in New York City, 84 customers per day to Prudential Connecticut Realty and 26 customers per day to RE/MAX Central Realty in Virginia Beach, Va.

Now that the lead generation is out in the open, look for a change in how all real estate portals report figures. For now, traffic numbers are still the gold standard, particularly when it turns into gold for subscribers and advertisers.

Published: May 16, 2001

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