Is Zoopla buying all the portals and/or have they abandoned the PropertyFinder deal?
Zoopla announced that is has purchased thinkproperty.com for an undisclosed sum.
One, two or ten portal purchases, the real management challenge is integrating these portals and creating one dominant brand.
There are of course still too many portals and whilst this will increase traffic for Zoopla agents it leaves Zoopla with the headache of integration. Zoopla's acquisition strategy will have faced these issues and I suspect this is the long term plan to integrate front and back end systems and perhaps feeds, but just how long do Zoopla have to complete the task, will the task be complete only to find the market has changed? It is possible that after a two to three year acquisition and integration process the market will have changed. I have to say however that if the market is going to change then it will be towards the Trulia/Zoopla model and therefore this strategy would appear spot on.
That said, I do wonder whether Zoopla's strategy ought to be more focused on new technology rather than building a portfolio of portals. Perhaps it is as they are certainly not shy to innovate. Whatever the course they are steering they are the ones to watch.
Having a strategy to regularise property feeds would also be a marvellous idea and one that the industry as a whole should work towards, but this is another debate.
Anyway, all the above activity keeps us busy and I still think Zoopla needs to purchase another blog, know of one?!
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2 comments:
no doubt that They did well and are getting bigger
It does seem like they are buying up all the competition to move up the rankings of the top property portals. What I think they will be doing is offering a package deal that will include listings on all their sites.
This will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months if this strategy will work, and who knows what other websites might be next!
We run a leading online directory of estate agents and while we do not compete directly with portals ( as we do not list properties on the site ) we offer another way that estate agents can generate new leads, instructions and website visitors at a very cost effective price. www.EstateAgents123.com
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