Zoopla fights back after OTM claims to be No.2 portal

OnTheMarket (OTM) says its most recent monthly traffic for September shows it has overtaken Zoopla, which has fought back with its own claims.

zoopla charlile bryant

Zoopla’s CEO Charlie Bryant (main image) has made a rare public statement criticising a rival after OnTheMarket said last week that it had a record month for traffic during September.

The claim, which have been made by OnTheMarket in adverts and marketing communications, is that the portal received enough visitors during September to make it the UK’s second largest portal during that month behind Rightmove.

Zoopla issued a statement over the weekend saying it wanted estate agents to understand the ‘tactics’ being used by its competitor and that it believes the extra traffic has come from via “low quality display advertising” to “create a headline”.

Also, Zoopla says the figures shared by OnTheMarket within its recent advertising “highlight the month of September and do not accurately reflect the entirety of 2024”.

It is also claimed that OnTheMarket’s use of advertising to attract more visitors via a 209% increase in ‘paid traffic’ is reflected in its own figures, which show people spending less time during each visit, a higher ‘bounce’ rate and lower numbers of pages viewed per visit.

Increasing traffic

“These metrics reveal to us that OnTheMarket’s strategy seems to be focused on increasing traffic numbers rather than engaging serious movers,” says Bryant.

“Low visit duration, higher bounce rates, and fewer pages viewed means, in our experience, that users are less likely to convert into leads for [and agent’s] business.

“We recently commissioned a poll with OnePulse to better understand which property websites consumers would expect to see their homes on if they put them up for sale and 68% said Rightmove. 38% Zoopla and 4% OnTheMarket.”

A spokesperson for OnTheMarket says:

We are grateful to Zoopla for highlighting that more people visited OnTheMarket than their site. Since CoStar Group’s acquisition we’ve been clear about our goal to become the UK’s market leading portal. In September 2024, we generated 56 million visits to our site compared to 18 million visits in September 2023, a 212% increase year on year with sales leads up 76% in the period.

“Zoopla’s figures for our website traffic are based on 3rd party estimates, which are sample-based and therefore inaccurate. Our data is based on the actual metrics provided by Google Analytics, which is the undisputed source of truth for web traffic. The facts are clear that throughout 2024 we have seen a huge increase in leads, time spent on the site and overall traffic, exceeding Zoopla’s in September.

“Our rapid rate of growth shows that we are delivering on CoStar Group’s long-standing strategy of partnering with its customers to generate high-intent leads at a fraction of the cost of our rivals.”


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