Realtor.com and Remax

are top Search Terms

on Internet for Real Estate

A recent study by Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service, ranks ‘realtor.com' and ‘remax' as the two most frequently used real estate search terms on the Internet. The study looked at Internet searches completed in September.

With 80 percent of buyers now using the Internet when seeking a home, it has become increasingly important in the real estate industry to have the kind of widely recognized brand that consumers will utilize as a search term when seeking real estate information and listings through search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.

The terms listed below are ranked by volume of searches that brought traffic to websites in the Hitwise Business and Finance - Real Estate category for the four weeks ending Sept. 29, based on Internet usage in the United States.

Rank Search Term Volume
1. realtor.com 1.69%
2. remax 0.92%
3. real estate 0.46%
4. Apartments for rent 0.44%
5. century 21 0.38%
6. homes for sale 0.38%
7. Apartments 0.37%
8. zillow.com 0.34%
9. remax.com 0.33%
10. zillow 0.31%

RE/MAX offices are leaders in Northern Illinois real estate sales and have been number one in residential sales in the Chicago metropolitan area since 1989. In 2006, RE/MAX Northern Illinois affiliates closed more than $15 billion in sales.

The RE/MAX network in northern Illinois, currently marking its 30th anniversary, consists of 4,100 associates and 169 individually owned and operated offices providing residential, relocation and commercial real estate services throughout the northern one-third of Illinois. Its website, www.illinoisproperty.com, receives more than 1.2 million unique visitors each month. The Northern Illinois region is part of RE/MAX International, a global real estate network with 6,900 independently owned offices and 121,000 member sales associates in 70 countries.