What Online Directories are the most effective?

Posted at 9:50 AM, Feb. 2, 2008

We thought we would share some insight with you.  Many of you post your listings in online directories and are probably aware of the benefits.  We ran a query on 2 of the most active flyers created this week on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com and following are the views these flyers (listings) have had in each directory.  The report below only shows sources that had a total count above 10 views.  Anything below 10 views was excluded and keep in mind some directories such as Craigslist do not record opens (disallowed) so are not taken into consideration.

Source	View Count
Natural Search Engine Search	4150
Backpage	911
ClassifiedFlyerAds.com	631
OLX	420
Google Base	276
Oodle	205
Trulia	179
Email	98
Edgeio	84
RSS Feeds	78
Digg	63
Propeller	46
Vast	40
Ebay	37
eHouseAds	36
Lycos	30
Kijiji	22
Zillow	19
ActiveRain	18
Hotpads	17
Geebo	12

Natural search engine means flyer views that were made from searches done in Google, Yahoo or other search engines and as you can see those top the list.  What this tells us is many buyers are finding listings from a good old fashion search engine search over finding them in directories.  So if you can accomplish getting your listings ranked in search engines then your listings will benefit greatly.

Backpage is second on the list so if you are not posting your listings to Backpage you should start.

OLX has also returned good results on a consistent basis.

Of course the results vary based on listing, price and location but this should give you a general idea on the top online sources where you should be advertising your listings.

DON'T FORGET - most of the directories also allow you to create and post service ads.  Many Agents will advertisie their listings but forget to advertise their services.  Create "Real Estate Service Flyers" and post those to directories too.