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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →In 2015, Realtor.com CEO Ryan O’Hara said the company was trying to narrow its audience gap with Zillow through News Corp. cross-promotion and stronger product development. The traffic figures in the contemporaneous account were not directly equivalent: O’Hara cited 40 million Realtor.com users in June, while a company representative said comScore measured 34.1 million unique visitors.
What O’Hara said Realtor.com was doing to catch up
Kevin Lisota’s GeekWire report, published August 6, 2015, covered O’Hara speaking at Inman Connect in San Francisco. News Corp. had acquired Realtor.com’s parent company the previous November, and O’Hara pointed to the new owner’s media network as a way to reach more people.
Cross-promotion across News Corp.
O’Hara said Realtor.com promoted its service across News Corp. properties, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and Fox. He described widgets and ads placed across that network as part of the reason Realtor.com was gaining ground. The strategy was to use the parent company’s reach to bring more home shoppers to the portal.
More product innovation
O’Hara also acknowledged that Realtor.com needed to improve innovation and product development. The report noted that the company had recently hired a chief product officer and a chief marketing officer as part of that effort. The account describes a priority, not evidence that a particular product change had already closed the competitive gap.
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What the 2015 traffic numbers do—and do not—show
O’Hara said Realtor.com added 3 million unique users in June, reaching a record 40 million. He said Zillow added 1 million and Trulia lost 1 million. But GeekWire reported that Realtor.com’s press representative subsequently clarified that comScore measured 34.1 million unique visitors for Realtor.com that month. The difference matters: the 40 million figure was O’Hara’s claim, while 34.1 million was the comScore count relayed by the company representative.
GeekWire separately reported Zillow averaged 141 million monthly unique users in the second quarter of 2015. That quarterly average is not the same period or a necessarily identical measure as a single month’s Realtor.com figures. These numbers should be read as historical, attributed audience claims—not as a clean, like-for-like scorecard or a statement about either site’s audience today.
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How O’Hara framed the competition
O’Hara argued that competition could benefit consumers and the industry by encouraging portals to improve value for consumers and service for industry partners. As he put it: “I think from a consumer standpoint, we’ll make each other better.”
The same 2015 report also described a legal dispute in careful terms: Move, the company operating Realtor.com under a joint operating agreement with the National Association of Realtors, alleged that Zillow had used confidential trade secrets from former Move executive Errol Samuelson. This was a contemporaneous allegation reported by GeekWire, not an adjudicated finding or a description of a current dispute.
Why this is historical, not a current Realtor.com comparison
O’Hara’s comments capture the strategy he described in 2015; they do not establish Realtor.com’s current leadership, audience, or competitive position. HousingWire identified Damian Eales as Realtor.com CEO in February 2026 and covered audience metrics, MLS partnerships and Realtor.com+. A 2024 Real Estate News interview described Eales’s focus on the core buy- and sell-side business and a Zillow rentals partnership. Those later accounts provide context, but they do not verify whether the 2015 traffic claims or O’Hara’s strategy remain current.
A current comparison of Realtor.com and Zillow would need dated, method-consistent measures—such as audience, listing coverage and freshness, consumer engagement, product capabilities, and services to industry partners. The figures reported in 2015 cannot establish a present-day ranking.
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