And so it went for just- launched website Avvo , a new venture from the producers of consumer information portal Zillow. As reported in SeattlePI and later Venturebeat , Avvo does for consumers seeking legal counsel what Zillow did for buyers searching…

Not that Zillow necessarily has to justify this claim, but without some independent measure it seems a bit hollow. On this basis, realtor.com could just say that they have 12 million, because the “measured it internally”. This is important because the variations that apply to one site are very likely to apply to other similar sites; and the relative size is important to advertisers looking for the “best” vehicle.

If it isn’t both independent *and* independently verifiable, it is fair to question these claims — especially since they are so far out of whack with everyone’s metrics. This could be that they are simply siting “Visits” as “People”, which looks about right against the numbers.

Spencer/David: This isn’t a dig at you or the business – so please don’t interpret it as such. It is just that accepted practice among “media companies” (which is what Zillow calls itself, and what it in fact is when it asks advertisers to pay) is to site independently verifiable statistics. NBC can’t simply claim to “dominate Monday night TV” because they disagree with Nielsen. No one remembers the score, they remember the ranking.

I say, put up some verifiable facts or site the independent numbers. When websites refuse to do so it raises the potential for deceptive claims of advertising reach. I am certainly not saying that Zillow is being deceptive, but if there is “no truth”, others will be.

The fact that Legg Mason is over paying to get into these deals is very scary for existing Zillow shareholders – UNLESS, they don’t take anymore money from VC’s. I smell a MAJOR down round on valuation coming unless they start controlling expenses. There is no way that the revenue is ramping at a level to offset expenses in the near term. Please notify me when the first round of pink slips goes out to Zillow employees this Holiday season (or early part of ‘08).

Thanks,
Doug

I had raised questions about Zillow’s business model not being commensurate with the amount of money it has raised earlier.
http://sramanamitra.com/2007/07/11/ziprealtyzillow/

Sramana

The fact that Comscore, Hitwise and Quantcast are consistently wrong has been well-reported by many respected news organizations. See for example this recent article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/technology/22click.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

We pay Omniture a fortune to track our traffic internally, and as DavidG said above we’re very pleased to see such sizable traffic gains (+20% y-o-y) despite the overall online real estate category being down significantly. Thank you for updating the story with the correct data.

Also, you wrote: “In the meantime, Zillow is throwing money at hiring engineers, though its [sic] not certain why. Zillow has 155 employees, and 108 of them are technical workers, of which 30 are developers.”
Where did you get these numbers from? The statement that “30 are developers” is incorrect. And to say “its [sic] not certain why” is ridiculous. The reason why is that we’re a media company and we rely on our talented development staff to build exciting products that attract consumers and then advertisers. It’s basically the same reason why news organizations hire reporters — to produce content that attracts readers and advertisers. That’s why.