Google Trends has allowed users to compare the the number of searches for specific keywords. You could compare how popular searches for “Sydney Real Estate For Sale” compared against “Sydney Property For Sale”. Just recently Google has added the ability to compare actual visitors to specific sites. Your site has to produced significant traffic to appear on their radar so virtually all individual agent websites don’t produce the traffic to show, but lots of sites do as per the examples.

These are some graphs I have created using the tool. The graphs speak for themselves but there are a couple of things worth specifically noting. Look at MyHome since the money got turned off. Shane definitely has some work ahead of him just to return it to is previous traffic levels.

Also, have a look at the domain and REA comparison. REA really lost ground very late 2007 however they bounced back. I remember commenting on this at the time but have never revisited it. In recent months, REA looks to be more effected by the slowdown in the industry although this could just be the resolution of the graph too.

I could not help put in the trading post versus ebay graph given my recent post on Sensis. How they think they can compare their numbers is crazy. Interesting to see that whitepages and yellowpages traffic is down substantially over the past year.

Anyway.. on to the graphs (please note.. if you want to have a play yourself to get the actual traffic numbers you have to have an account or else you get the trend lines only, I think)

I shrinked the graphs so they appear on the web page better but have linked them to our image host so you can view the slightly larger versions yourself or you could even visit Google Trends and run your own report at Google Trends.

In a never say die attitude Sensis are changing their online strategy again. Late last year they virtually abandoned their justlisted.com.au site and made it a simple doorway site to Domain’s data but now they want www.tradingpost.com.au to change to an auction system and take on the mighty ebay.

Sensis bought www.tradingpost.com.au in 2004 for a massive $636 million dollars and the business has been sliding back on them since then.

Some pretty big claims have been coming out of Sensis lately, including one that states “2 million people” already use www.tradingpost.com.au each month. Sensis were trying to hold this up against ebay’s 5 million account holders to show that they might gain traction in online auctions.

Now that has to be PR spin plain and simple. After reading this I quickly surveyed the next 20 people I met and not one person had visited www.tradingpost.com.au within the past several months and most have never visited it at all. (more…)