Homes.com Earns Top 100 Finish On Global SEO Ranking List

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German search engine optimization (SEO) platform SISTRIX named Homes.com as one of the 100 fastest-growing domains in the United States. The CoStar Group-owned portal was the only real estate site to make the 2023 IndexWatch, which focuses on domains with the strongest organic visibility growth and declines on Google.com.

“It is an honor to be recognized by SISTRIX’s IndexWatch 2023 for the significant growth and awareness that Homes.com has experienced throughout 2023,” CoStar Group founder and CEO Andy Florance said in a statement on Friday. “We set out to create a platform with the highest quality content on neighborhoods, schools, and parks that benefits homebuyers and all agents.”

SISTRIX measured a total of 100 million domains for 100 million keywords on Google. The U.S. accounted for nearly 2,500 of the domains included in the list, which is split into four categories measuring the domains with the biggest increases and decreases in absolute visibility and absolute percentage growth.

Homes.com’s index score — which SISTRIX calls visibility points — increased from 20.94 in February 2023 to 43.54 in January 2024.

“This visibility growth is a testament not only to the quality of the product but to the quality of our team for consistently producing the best user experience,” Florance said.

The SISTRIX list adds another layer to the months-long traffic battle between Homes.com and Realtor.com.

In October, CoStar Group announced Homes.com had usurped Realtor.com as the nation’s second-biggest residential portal. CoStar Group said Homes.com’s monthly unique visitors jumped from 46.3 million in August to 100 million in September — a whopping 117 percent change. Competitors doubted Homes.com’s triple-digit growth and claimed CoStar inflated numbers through copious paid advertising.

At Inman Connect New York, Florance and Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales addressed the traffic drama during their respective sessions on the conference’s main stage. Eales stopped short of calling Florance a liar, instead choosing to liken the CEO’s traffic claims to a student “marking [their] own homework.”

Still, Florance stood by the validity of Homes.com’s traffic while hinting the next round of statistics expected to come during CoStar Group’s fourth-quarter earnings might be just as unbelievable to competitors as the last.

“[We use] Google Analytics, and it’s widely accepted as the gold standard,” he said. “It is how Realtor.com has reported their numbers for the last decade, how Zillow reported the numbers for the last decade, how Redfin reports.”

“We can’t lie,” he added. “If I lie about a number in public company reporting, I go to jail four times as long as you’d go to jail for shooting someone in the head in the street. Public companies don’t make these things up.”

Email Marian McPherson