CoStar-owned portal OnTheMarket (OTM) allegedly used “misleading” traffic data to knock competitor Zoopla off its spot as the second-highest-trafficked home search site in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Britain’s portal wars are heating up as it battles accusations. .
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CoStar-owned portal OnTheMarket (OTM) has allegedly used “misleading” traffic data to unseat competitor Zoopla as the second-highest traffic home search site in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Britain’s portal wars are heating up as it battles accusations. .
A spokesperson for Zoopla told the online marketplace of international proptech sites on Monday that OnTheMarket used “low-quality display ads” to drive website traffic to 56 million visitors in September and that consumers spoke about the suspicion that OTM had misled them into thinking it had naturally surpassed Zoopla, which had 47 million users. Visitors during the same period.
“Normally we avoid engaging in public debate, but it is important to share the facts so that we can better understand the arguments and tactics being deployed to ‘win points.’ We believe this is important,” Zoopla said in a written statement.
Zoopla said OTM’s September traffic spike ultimately fell under its radar as Zoopla outperformed OTM every month of the year. The portal also cited data from third-party traffic analysis site Similarweb, which found that despite a 209% increase in paid traffic, OTM visit length and page views per visit increased by 9.8% and 20.8% respectively in September. He pointed out that it had decreased.
“OTM’s strategy appears to be focused on increasing traffic rather than contracting with full-fledged movers,” Zoopla added.
Meanwhile, OTM was undaunted by Zoopla’s claims and reasserted its newly won position in the UK portal space.
“We thank Zoopla for highlighting that more people visit OnTheMarket than Zoopla’s site,” an OTM spokesperson said in a written statement. “Since acquiring CoStar Group, we have been clear about our aim to become the UK’s market leading portal.”
“Our rapid growth demonstrates that we are executing on CoStar Group’s long-standing strategy of partnering with our customers to generate highly motivated leads at a fraction of the cost of our competitors.” they added. “The facts are clear, we saw a significant increase in leads, time on site and overall traffic throughout 2024, surpassing Zoopla in September.”
The escalating conflict between OTM and Zoopla reflects the ongoing battle between Homes.com, owned by CoStar, and Realtor.com, owned by Move, with both companies spending much of the past year targeting misleading traffic. They have been battling over claims of metrics, deceptive advertising and theft of trade secrets.
In October 2023, CoStar made headlines when it announced that Homes.com achieved a 117% unique visitor increase from August (46.3 million) to September (100 million). Apparently, the site has surpassed Realtor.com as the second most trafficked portal in the world. US However, Homes.com’s competitors quickly took issue with CoStar’s reporting methods, traffic monitoring tools, and other strategies to improve performance, including its aggressive paid traffic strategy.
“It’s hard to understand the consistency of their calculations,” a Realtor.com spokesperson told Inman in an in-depth look at 2023 portal traffic.
The transportation battle evolved into 2024, with Homes.com’s transportation performance becoming the basis of a challenge to Move’s national advertising arm and a trade secret theft lawsuit against CoStar. NAD’s challenge led CoStar to adjust its advertising to focus more on Homes.com’s idiosyncratic traffic metrics than the Homes.com network’s traffic performance, while the trade secret theft lawsuit was filed in August 2025. is on track for a jury trial.
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