Globrix claims record traffic as other portals buckle

The number of unique visitors to free portal service Globrix reached nearly a million in June, 18 months after launching. At over 990,000, it was the highest level of traffic the property search engine has reported.

According to Globrix, it also bucks the trend of what has generally been seen in the portal industry. The latest figures by ComScore show decreasing overall traffic to property websites, although the giant Rightmove still claims 30m visits a month. Nielsen has shown similar evidence of a decline in traffic to portals, and taking an average from ComScore and Nielsen data shows that Globrix is the only property search site that is increasing in traffic levels.

Globrix’s chief executive Daniel Lee said that the site’s growth in traffic has all been organic. He said that whilst most property portals buy traffic from third party sites such as Google to boost their traffic numbers, Globrix has never done this.

Lee said: “I’ve never believed that it makes business sense for portals to buy traffic just to be at a certain position in a league table. The traffic that portals buy from third parties is often poor quality, which is little value to the agents themselves.

“On the other hand, the traffic that comes to Globrix is very high quality as people only come to Globrix to look for property, not to get house price estimations and so on.

“As the recent Propertyfinder case has shown, you can have impressive levels of traffic but it’s not a sustainable business if you have to pay to get your users. You’re much better off investing in the site itself and then the users will come to you anyway.”

Globrix has been a stablemate of Propertyfinder, both owned by News International, which now appears to find the free search engine model more attractive as a business proposition than the traditional subscription model.

Propertyfinder was put up for sale by News International and its other co-owner, REA Group, after making heavy losses. It is thought that talks were held last Friday with Zoopla, which looks set to purchase at least some of the Propertyfinder business.  

However, all the portals have an uphill battle on their hands. A recent Globrix survey has shown that over three-quarters of agents rate the site as ‘very important to them’, but 21% said they don’t track where the traffic to their site comes from.

Lee said: “We send millions of clicks a month to agents, so to find that a fifth of agents don’t track where their site traffic comes from is disappointing. No matter what industry you work in, it’s absolutely vital that you track where your traffic comes from or you won’t have any idea what’s working for you in your marketing strategy. It’s very easy to track your site traffic, as tools like Google Analytics are available free of charge and are simple to implement.”