Review Criteria : Exposure Offered

Google is the most popular search engine in the world and therefore one of the primary sources of potential buyers for your property.

To gauge each site's exposure on Google we performed number of searches on google.co.uk and recorded how often each site appeared on the critical first page of the results.

The actual searches performed were the same as those done for the Google exposure test.

The overall score for this the "Exposure on Google" criteria is based upon the total number of times the site appeared on the front page for the 10 searches above. As each site can be listed twice, this gives a possible maximum of 20 appearances in the results, but this is very unlikely.

The first 6 search terms used are amongst the most popular property related searches on the web:
property for sale
houses for sale

Yahoo is generally peceived as the second biggest search engine in the world and therefore one an important source of potential buyers for your property.

To gauge each site's exposure on Yahoo we performed number of searches on yahoo.co.uk and recorded how often each site appeared on the critical first page of the results.

The actual searches performed were the same as those done for the Google exposure test.

The overall score for this the "Exposure on Yahoo" criteria is based upon the total number of times the site appeared on the front page for the 10 searches.

Criteria for GOOD rating
Site appeared 5 or more times

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
Site appeared 2 or more times

Criteria for POOR rating
Site appeared less than 2 times

MSN is the third of the big search engines and another important source of potential buyers for your property.

To gauge each site's exposure on MSN we performed the same test searches as we did for Google and Yahoo, but this time using MSNs UK search.

The overall score for this the "Exposure on MSN" criteria is based upon the total number of times the site appeared on the front page for the 10 searches.

Criteria for GOOD rating
Site appeared 5 or more times

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
Site appeared 2 or more times

Criteria for POOR rating
Site appeared less than 2 times

There are 2 key UK websites that privately sold properties can appear on that are essential if you want to maximise the exposure of your property:

Many sites maintain a mailing list of potential buyers who have registered details of the type of property they are looking for. When new properties are added to their sites relevant buyers are automatically contacted giving your property instant and targeted exposure.

Criteria for GOOD rating
The site maintains a mailing list of buyers.

Criteria for POOR rating
No mailing list of buyers is maintained.

Alexa is a service that, amongst other things, rank the popularity of websites amongst a very large user group. The busiest site (Currently Yahoo.com) is given a rank of 1 with all sites their huge user base visit given an increasingly high rank as the number of users drops.

Whilst not infallible, Alexa does give some indication of the broad reach of a site and provide some balance for sites who concentrate more on offline marketing.

Criteria for GOOD rating
An Alexa rank of under 100,000.

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
An Alexa rank of under 200,000.

Criteria for POOR rating
An Alexa rank of over 200,000 or a site too new or not busy enough to achieve any Alexa rank.

One of the best ways that a property site can get highly targeted buyers to see your details is to ensure that the property details themselves get indexed by search engines. This way the search engines will be able to match searches made by buyers to the specific details of your property, rather than just general categories.

To test this criteria we picked a property from each site that had been listed for at least a week and was located in a smaller area (to make testing easier) and searched for "Property for sale in (specific area)" on Google.co.uk . As not all sites have properties in the same area we perform the test twice and record only the best result in order to create a less subjective result.

Criteria for GOOD rating
Target property appeared on page 1 of Google results.

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
Target property appeared on page 2 or 3 of Google results.

Criteria for POOR rating
Target property did not appear on first 3 pages of Google results.

Another important way for property sites to get buyers to visit them is by having links from other websites.

To measure this we simply searched Google for sites mentioning each property website and recorded the results.

Criteria for GOOD rating
25,000+ Results

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
10,000+ results

Criteria for POOR rating
Less than 10,000 results

Estate agents have long known that one of the best ways to reach buyers is through for-sale boards, and it is important not to miss the benefits that these offer just because you are selling privately. Professional property for sale boards are eye-catching and provide all the information that a buyer needs to make contact and find our more about your property.

Criteria for GOOD rating
A for-sale board is included in the minimum package price.

Criteria for AVERAGE rating
For-sale boards are available at an additional cost.

Criteria for POOR rating
The site does not provide for-sale boards.