Estate Agent Today

Property search engine Home has warned Rightmove that preventing ‘deep-linking’ to property details is damaging its estate agent clients.

Home stopped linking into Rightmove’s website last year after threats of legal action from Rightmove but says it has now given Rightmove a month’s notice that it intends to restart.
 Doug Shephard of Home said: “We were mystified by Rightmove’s attitude on this from the start. It’s clear to us that our search engine could be directing our buyer traffic of around 1 million hits per month to Rightmove listed properties.  This can only serve to increase the return on investment for their estate agent clients.

“We have since taken detailed legal advice on the points raised by Rightmove and are now satisfied that we are within our rights to continue linking into their site.  Our advisers have also pointed out that Rightmove themselves might be in trouble for abusing their market position. We’ve given them a month to respond to the issues raised in our letter to try to keep things on an amicable level.”

Rightmove said it was unable to comment, but was studying the case.  It has previously made it clear that it will not tolerate having its content taken by search engines or other internet sites.