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Traditional Classifieds Businesses Beware: Craigslist Growing Quickly, Virally into Local Markets
Craigslist has built a cult-like following in certain parts of the U.S., most notably, San Francisco, and to a lesser degree, New York City. However, new Internet behavior data demonstrate that the mostly-free classifieds and community website is growing considerably as it seeps into new local markets.
Market share of total U.S. Internet visits to www.craigslist.org increased 73 percent the week ending June 25, 2005 versus a year-ago (week ending June 26, 2004). The site www.craigslist.org is the service's core domain and serves as the local site for the San Francisco Bay Area. Meanwhile, the collective market share of visits to 60 of the most popular Craigslist domains for individual U.S. cities increased 98 percent over the same period.
"Craigslist may appear barebones, but its utility and ability to tap into local communities and market places is evidenced by rapid audience growth in existing and new local markets," said Bill Tancer, vice president of research, Hitwise. "Should Craigslist successfully scale and penetrate new markets like it did San Francisco, one lingering question is sure to manifest: how will established purveyors of classifieds listings, particularly local newspapers, adapt and compete?"
Among the 30 most popular Craigslist city sites, 23 had year-over-year gains in market share greater than 100 percent, and three others have since more than doubled. Among the fastest growing local sites were: fresno.craigslist.org, up 422 percent; providence.craigslist.org, up 405 percent; miami.craigslist.org, up 363 percent; and dallas.craigslist.org, up 322 percent (week ending June 25, 2005 versus week ending June 25, 2004).
Searches For Craigslist Soar
As traffic to the Craigslist Web site continues to soar, so do brand searches across all major search engines, including Google, MSN Search and Yahoo! Search, among others. The share of all Internet searches for "craigslist" increased 114 percent over the past year, from .011 percent of all searches the week ending July 3, 2004 to .025 percent the week ending June 25, 2005. The term "craigslist" now is number 30 in the ranking of most popular search terms across all major engines.
As for the thousands of individual search terms successfully driving traffic to Craigslist, they reflect the seemingly infinite variety of goods and services being sold and traded, as well as the diverse community members in each local market. For example: "houses for rent", "free online dating", "88 nissan pathfinder", "classifieds", "mini doberman pinscher", "spanish tutoring" and "brad pitt fan club".
Housing Jitters Manifest: Internet Searches for 'Real Estate Bubble' Rise
As speculation over a U.S. real estate bubble continues in the mainstream media, new Internet search behavior data suggest consumers are equally concerned that the current market is overpriced.
Consumer Internet searches for the terms "real estate bubble" and "housing bubble" reached a 12-month high the week ending May 28, 2005. The market share of these terms across all major search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and others, skyrocketed 311 percent and 174 percent respectively versus the prior week.
Visits to real estate sites endured an expected seasonal decline at the end of 2004, but interest increased into the spring and early summer of 2005, growing an average of three percent each week. The market share of total Internet visits for real estate sites is up 19 percent the week ending June 11, 2005 versus a year-ago.
"Increased traffic on real estate sites is reflective of the sector's growing adoption of Web-based technologies and databases, often used for digital storefronts, marketing, inventory listings and buyer financing," said Bill Tancer, Vice President of Research at Hitwise. "Still, recent Internet search activity suggests that some activity in the category is being driven by curiosity of rising property values and the possibility of a bursting bubble. Should we undergo a market decline, it will be interesting to see how site traffic and search activity correspond."
Navigating To Real Estate Sites
Hitwise clickstream data for the four weeks ending June 11 reveal that 25.0 percent of visits to real-estate sites originate directly from other real-estate sites; 22.1 percent from search engines; 8.1 percent from Web email services; and 6.3 percent from portal home pages. Once on a real-estate site, 32.2 percent of visitors will depart directly to another real-estate site; 5.5 percent to a search engine; 4.8 percent to an online bank or financial institution; and 4.9 percent will go to a portal home page.
Search Analysis – Industry Search Term Analysis
Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveal the most popular search terms which resulted in visits to Entertainment websites for the 4 weeks ending July 9, 2005. The results are ordered based on the volume of searches (see table below).
Top 10 Search Terms Driving Traffic to Entertainment websites: Period - Four Weeks Ending 7/9/05
| Search Term | Share (%) |
|---|
| 1. | games | 0.38 |
| 2. | weather | 0.22 |
| 3. | pogo.com | 0.19 |
| 4. | yahoo games | 0.17 |
| 5. | ticketmaster | 0.15 |
| 6. | free ringtones | 0.15 |
| 7. | cheat codes | 0.13 |
| 8. | movies | 0.13 |
| 9. | harry potter | 0.12 |
| 10. | jokes | 0.12 |
Fast Mover - Live 8
www.live8live.com
Rank week ending June 11th: 19
Rank week ending July 2nd: 2
Positions jumped: 17
The official site of the Live 8 concert (www.live8live.com) witnessed chart topping results thanks to the worldwide concert that took place on July 2, 2005. Music lovers as well as activists logged on to www.live8live.com to gain information on key issues facing Africa, show support for the cause, and listen to the live concerts.
Hitwise data show that www.live8live.com experienced an increase in market share of US visits by 1,961 percent (week ending July 2, 2005 versus week ending June 11, 2005). The site climbed up the ranks among 'Community- Humanitarian' websites - from number 19 (week ending June 11) to number 2 (week ending July 2) behind The One Campaign (www.one.org) and ahead of The Hunger Site (www.hungersite.com) and The Child Health site (www.childhealthsite.com).
Hitwise data further reveal that the predominant demographic profile of visitors to www.live8live.com (for the 4 weeks ending July 2, 2005) were female (54 percent), aged 35-44 years (29 percent), with a household income of $30-60K (28 percent). Showing the strength of the Live8 brand, the search term "live 8" generated more than half the visits (54 percent) to www.live8live.com (4 weeks ending July 2, 2005).
Category Spotlight: Shopping & Classifieds – Department Stores
This category includes sites that offer a wide range of goods. If a site sells goods across more than 50% of the Hitwise shopping categories, then it is deemed a department store. This category includes both online and offline department stores. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 07/16/2005 » Ranks by 'Visits'.
Case Study: A Recruitment Firm
Learning from the successes of others is a great way to save time and money. When a recruitment firm was looking to identify the best partner for its business, it turned to Hitwise.
Using the Hitwise 'Charting' tool, this employment client noticed their main competitor recently increased their market share of visits in the Employment category. The client investigated why this occurred and discovered that the competitor had recently partnered with another leading employment site.
Over a 3-month period, Hitwise trend analysis revealed that the competitor enjoyed a 150% increase in market share of visits. In addition, by viewing the Hitwise 'Clickstream' report the client confirmed that the main driver of this growth was in fact the relationship with this new partner.
This data, only available from Hitwise, showed the recruitment firm that this affiliate relationship was not only successful for acquiring new customers, but also for generating repeat visitation and therefore, sustaining market share against competitors.
Armed with this information, the Marketing Manager was able to:
1. Gain insight into competitors affiliate relationships and customer acquisition strategies.
2. Measure the effectiveness of competitors affiliate strategies.
3. Identify, evaluate and select potential affiliate partners for their own website in a more cost-effective and timely manner.
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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, July 2005
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Hitwise United States Newsletter - July 2005
Real-time competitive intelligence