Rightmove is searched 11,100,000 times a month in the UK, Zoopla 1,830,000. Together that is almost 13 million monthly searches for the portal names alone. An estate agent trying to compete on "houses for sale in london" is entering a game that is already over (DataForSEO, Google Ads UK, September 2026).
An estate agent's online marketing isn't won on buyers, who now arrive through the portals, but on sellers: people searching for what their home is worth and how to sell it. That is the half of the market where the portals are weak and agents can still win.
Below: the numbers for the two kinds of demand, what happens on Google's first page, and how to build a flow of instructions.
The buyer side is lost, and that's fine
Zoopla ranks for 424,639 UK keywords with 18,712 first positions and estimated organic traffic of 13.9 million visits a month. Rightmove ranks for 509,377, not far off, but with 172,921 first positions: more than nine times as many, for traffic of 29.7 million.
Buyer searches have high volumes and very low costs: "houses for sale in london" 33,100 a month at £0.63 a click, "flats to rent london" 33,100 at £0.95 (CPC converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242). They are cheap because they convert poorly: people looking for a home browse dozens of listings before contacting anyone, and they do it inside the portal.
For an agent, the practical consequence is that the portal isn't a competitor: it is a paid channel for listing properties, with a cost to be budgeted as such. The real competition is over who gets the instruction.
The seller side is where the margin is
Here the numbers look different. "How much is my house worth" has 33,100 searches a month at £1.69 a click, "house valuation" 22,200 at £3.50 with high competition, "online house valuation" 8,100 at £3.61, "free house valuation" 3,600 at £7.30. "Sell my house" has only 1,900 searches, but a click costs £38.99. "Estate agents near me" has 49,500.
A CPC between five and twelve times higher than on the buyer side says it all: whoever buys clicks on these words knows there is a commission at the other end. And the seasonality is clear, with "house valuation" reaching 27,100 searches and "how much is my house worth" 40,500 in January 2026, and "sell my house" peaking at 2,900 in September 2025: people decide to sell at the turn of the year and when they are back from the summer.
The tool that catches this demand is the free online valuation, which almost every agent has and almost none gets ranking: it sits on the site as a form, without a page that answers the search "how much is my house worth in [area]". One page per neighbourhood, with up-to-date prices per square foot and the date, catches demand the portal only covers in aggregate form.
On local search, agents are still there
On "estate agents london", 6,600 searches a month with a peak of 9,900 in September 2025, the page is mixed. The first element is a strip of links to directories such as Yell and Yelp, followed by a local pack with three agents: Stirling Ackroyd West End 4.8 with 203 reviews, Greater London Properties 4.6 with 191, Story of Home 5.0 with 100. Then comes an AI Overview.
All ten organic results are agents' own sites, from Winkworth, Knight Frank, Savills and Foxtons to independents such as Daniel Cobb and Hudsons. Neither Rightmove nor Zoopla appears on the first page. On local search the portal doesn't have the advantage it has on listings.
Reviews matter a great deal: they decide who gets into the pack, and the three agents there have between 100 and 203. And two of the four questions Google shows on the same page are about fees: "How much do estate agents charge in the UK?" and "Who is the cheapest estate agent to sell with?". Sellers want to know the price before they call.
Recommended reading: SEO for estate agents.
The demand nobody covers: the mortgage
"First time buyer mortgage" has 6,600 searches a month at £3.22 a click with high competition, peaking at 8,100 in September 2025 and March 2026. It belongs to banks, brokers and comparison sites.
An agent won't compete on that keyword, but it shows where the buyer's anxiety lies: not in finding the home, which the portal solves, but in working out whether they can afford it. Agents who do content well cover that ground (how much deposit you need, which costs come on top of the price, such as stamp duty and conveyancing, how an offer works) and reach the buyer before the portal does in the decision process.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a website if I already list on the portals?
You need it to win instructions, not to sell properties. People searching "how much is my house worth" or "sell my house" aren't looking at listings, they are looking for someone to trust. The portal answers that question poorly.
How much does it cost to win an instruction through advertising?
With clicks between £3.50 and £7.30 on valuation searches and a realistic conversion rate, an enquiry costs tens of pounds and a signed instruction a few hundred. Against a typical sales fee the sums work with plenty of margin, which is why competition at auction is high.
Do automated online valuations hurt estate agents?
They give a number, not an instruction. People who use them still look for human confirmation, and the agent who turns up with the real prices of the latest sales in that street has an argument the algorithm doesn't.
How much do reviews matter?
A lot, because they decide who gets into the local pack, and because the questions on this search show sellers comparing agents on trust and price. The three agents in the London local pack have between 100 and 203 reviews: a threshold you can reach by asking at every completion.
When should you push?
In September and January, the months when "sell my house", "house valuation" and "estate agents london" reach their highs. December is the weakest month on almost every search in the sector.
Where to start
Take your last twenty instructions and split them by source: word of mouth, portal, board, website. If the website's share is close to zero while you pay the portal every month, you are buying visibility on the side where you don't set the price. The first page to write is the one on valuations in your area, with real prices per square foot and the date. If you want an opinion on how to set it up, get in touch.
