By Inman News, Monday, March 10, 2008.

RE/MAX Real Estate's remax.com http://remax.com/  Web site hopped into second place among the most popular real estate industry Web sites in February, up from its fourth-place ranking in January, Web metrics company Hitwise reported Friday, and real estate marketing company HomeGain http://www.homegain.com/ bumped from second place in January to fifth place in February.

Century 21 Real Estate's century21.com http://www.century21.com/ and MSN Real Estate's realestate.msn.com http://realestate.msn.com/ Web sites had the largest jump in ranking among the top-20 real estate category sites, Hitwise reported, based on the total number of unique visitors. Century21.com moved from 16th on the list in January to 10th on the list in February, while realestate.msn.com climbed from 18th in January to 11th in February.

Realtor.com continued its reign at the top of the list, with 5.16 percent of the market share of all unique visitors to real estate sties. But that market share had fallen compared to its 9.08 percent market share in January. Second-place remax.com http://remax.com/ had 2.61 percent of the market share in February, followed by Yahoo Real Estate's realestate.yahoo.com http://realestate.yahoo.com/ at 2.35 percent, Zillow.com http://zillow.com/ at 2.34 percent and HomeGain.com http://homegain.com/ with 2.32 percent.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's hud.gov Web site sank from 10th on the list in January to 14th on the list in February, and Homes.com http://homes.com/ dropped from 14th in January to 17th in February.

About 24.1 percent of all visits to real estate Web sites went to the top-10 sites in that category in February, compared to 27.4 percent in January.

Hitwise reported that real estate site 21online.com http://www.21online.com/ joined the top-100 rankings in February, in 87th place, and Cincinnati.com http://www.cincinnati.com/ also joined the list, rising from 110th in January to 95th in February. Rentals.realtor.com http://rentals.realtor.com/ moved from 34th in January to 153rd place in the rankings in February, while RedWeek.com http://www.redweek.com/ moved from 99th in January to  107th in February.

"Realtor.com" was the most popular search term for the four-week period ending Feb. 23, Hitwise reported, followed by "remax," "real estate," "zillow.com," "zillow," "apartments," "homes for sale," "realtor.com,"
"century21," and "realtor," in that order.

Among the fastest-moving Web sites tracked by Hitwise for the four months ending in February: RogerFazendin.com http://rogerfazendin.com/ ,up 266 places; SonoranGMAC.com http://sonorangmac.com/, up 180 places; SignOnSanDiego.com http://signonsandiego.com/ , up161 places; HomeInsight.com http://homeinsight.com/ , up 146 places; Myazland.com http://myazland.com/ , up 129 places; PruCalifornia.com
http://prucalifornia.com/ , up 113 places; RealEstateForeclosures.net http://www.realestateforeclosures.net/ , up 85 places, CapeMay.FNISMLS.com, up 58 places; and CarlsonRE.com http://carlsonre.com/, up 39 places.

Hitwise Real Estate Category Top 20 Web sites, February 2008