SISTRIX, a renowned German search engine optimization company, has spotlighted the CoStar-owned portal Homes.com among the top 100 fastest-growing domains in the United States.
The company's 2023 IndexWatch report highlights domains with notable organic visibility gains or declines on Google. Homes.com was the sole real estate website on this year's version coming in as the 43rd biggest grower overall.
Andy Florance, the founder and CEO of CoStar, expressed gratitude for the acknowledgement
"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."
SISTRIX analysed 100 million domains across 100 million keywords on Google. Nearly 2,500 U.S.-based domains made it to the list, categorized by the most substantial increases and decreases in absolute visibility and absolute percentage growth.
From February 2023 to January 2024, Homes.com's visibility points surged from 20.94 to 43.54 with Florance attributing the growth not only to the platform's quality but also to the superior user experience that his portal team strives for.
The inclusion of Homes.com in the SISTRIX list adds another dimension to the ongoing competition between Homes.com and Realtor.com for online traffic dominance. In October, CoStar Group claimed that Homes.com had risen from an 'also ran' to become the nation's second-largest residential real estate marketplace, surpassing Realtor.com.
At Inman Connect New York, both Andy Florance and Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales addressed the traffic dispute during their respective sessions with one characteristically pithy soundbite from Florance suggesting that if CoStar had fabricated traffic stats he'd be sent "to jail four times as long as you’d go to jail for shooting someone in the head in the street."
CoStar is due to release its numbers for the fourth quarter of 2023 later this month with many expecting another round of industry gasps or sighs at Homes.com's reported traffic numbers.