Brokerage website with no traffic or leads: why buyers who “look you up” never land on your site

Your agents tell buyers to look you up. Then your site gets almost no visits and almost no leads. Most of the time the buyer does search. They just end up somewhere other than your site. This page walks through each place they get lost, how to check it, and what to fix.

We pay hundreds a month for our brokerage website and get no leads. What are we doing wrong?

Most of the time, nothing is wrong with how hard you work. A website does not make leads by itself. Something has to send people to it, it has to give them a reason to sign up, and someone has to answer fast. When a site costs a few hundred dollars a month and the phone stays quiet, one of those three steps is broken.

Open your analytics for the last 90 days and find your row:

Then ask what the monthly fee pays for. If it covers a template and a framed IDX feed, your listings may be building the vendor’s site, not yours. One agent said it plainly: “we are paying companies to beat us in the search results so that they can sell the leads back to us.” You can also ask three recent clients what they tried to do on your site. The sections below show you how to check each step.

How will we know whether the website change helped?

Count real buyer and seller talks, booked appointments, and signed clients, along with what you spent. Keep the same checks before and after the change. If you also change your ads or agent follow-up, record that too. More leads alone will not tell you which change helped.

📌 Straight talk first: we make MLS Import, a WordPress plugin. It fixes one piece of this, the listings piece. Most of the other fixes below are free and don’t need a plugin.

Why do buyers who “look us up” never reach our website?

Most buyers search for homes, not for your brokerage, and the big home sites win those searches. A buyer types an address or “homes for sale in [town].” Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin usually get that click. Even a buyer who types your name can land on a map listing, a portal profile or an agent page, and never open your site.

The numbers show how big the portals are:

• Zillow averaged 243 million monthly unique users in Q2 2025, with 2.6 billion visits (Zillow Q2 2025 results).
• 52% of buyers found the home they bought online, and 27% found it through an agent, according to summaries of NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (BAM). We could not open NAR’s own PDF to double-check this one.

The main places buyers get lost:

• The address search goes to a portal. The buyer clicks Zillow, and the lead goes to whoever paid Zillow for it. Here is why Google skips your page when people search a property address, and how to check it.
• Your name search shows someone else. A franchise with a similar name, a portal office page or a review site sits above you.
• Your Google map listing is weak or missing. Or people call straight from it, and that call never shows up as a site visit.
• Agents share their own links. Business cards, email signatures and Instagram bios point to an agent page or a portal, not to your domain.
• Your listings sit in an iframe or on a vendor subdomain. Google gives the credit to the vendor, not to you.
• Visitors come but don’t sign up. There are no listing alerts, the forms are hard to find, or the site is slow on a phone.
• You’re not counting right. Analytics broke in a redesign, or form emails land in an inbox nobody reads.

Is your search on the vendor’s domain or on your own subdomain? See whether a vendor subdomain is bad for SEO and how to check yours.

One fix that works on the address and area searches the portals win: give each area you know a page of its own. See how neighborhood pages help a small brokerage get found.

Do buyers really find agents through brokerage websites?

A few do, but not many. In NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 43% of buyers found their agent through a referral. Only 6% found their agent “through a website with no specific reference” and 7% met their agent by asking about a home they saw online (BAM, citing NAR).

Agents tell the same story. In NAR’s 2025 Technology Survey, this is how many agents named each source as a top source of quality leads (HousingWire):

So a quiet brokerage site is common. That doesn’t mean it has to stay quiet. Referrals are your biggest source, and a referred buyer who hears “look us up” is exactly the person your site should catch. That’s the part you can fix.

Why do name searches matter so much for a brokerage site?

For brokerage sites, people who already know your name are the biggest door. In WAV Group’s 2013 Broker Website Effectiveness Study, 68% of visitors reached a broker site by typing its web address or searching a phrase tied to the brand (WAV Group). That study looked at Google Analytics data covering 7.5 million monthly visitors.

That study is old, so take the exact number with a grain of salt. The point still holds. When an agent says “look us up,” the buyer types your name. If your site isn’t the first thing they see, or the result looks wrong, that door closes. No survey says what buyers do right after they hear “look us up.” Your own data will tell you, and the next section shows where to look.

How to check where your traffic is going in 30 minutes

Run these six checks before you spend a dollar. They show where the “look us up” buyers really end up.

1. Search your name on a phone, signed out. Try “[Brokerage]” and “[Brokerage] [city].” Write down everything that shows up above you.
2. Check your name searches in Google Search Console. Search Console is Google’s free tool for site owners. Open the Performance report and filter for searches that include your brokerage name. Few clicks on your own name means the buyers are going somewhere else.
3. Type `site:yourdomain.com` into Google. If only a few pages come back, Google isn’t counting your listings or your pages.
4. Open a listing page, right-click it, and pick View Page Source. Search for the street address. If all you see is an iframe tag pointing to another domain, your listings belong to the vendor. Our guide Are IDX listings indexable on WordPress? shows the Search Console test that settles it.
5. Collect every agent’s business card, email signature and social bio. See which website each one really lists.
6. Send a test lead from your own site. Time how long it takes a real person to get it and reply.

What to ask your website company before you renew

Ask five questions, and get the answers in writing. They tell you what your monthly fee really buys and whether your listings help your own site in Google.

1. Are our listing pages on our own domain, or in an iframe or on a subdomain? Then check it yourself: open a listing, pick View Page Source, and search for the street address.
2. What does the monthly fee include? Hosting and the IDX feed only, or also writing, SEO work or ads?
3. How many visits and sign-ups did we get last quarter, and where did they come from?
4. Where does each lead go, and who gets told? Send a test lead and see who answers, and how fast.
5. What do we keep if we cancel? Ask about your domain, your pages, your listing pages and your lead list.

Why does an iframe IDX hurt a brokerage website?

An iframe is a window that shows someone else’s page inside yours. Google gives the listing content to the vendor’s domain, not to you. You can show a thousand listings and still get almost none of the search value. A vendor subdomain works the same way. Those pages count for the subdomain, not your main site.

As one agent put it: “There are two types of IDX; frame-in and indexable. Frame-in is not visible to Google.” Another wrote: “I have a broker’s website that I can control, EXCEPT the IDX is frame-in, which I recently discovered.”

Even listings on your own domain have limits. AgentFire, a website vendor, lists the reasons IDX pages often don’t get counted (AgentFire):

• Google can treat listing pages as thin. Thin means there’s not much on the page that’s your own.
• The same listing is on hundreds of sites. Google may keep one copy and drop the rest (that’s the duplicate content problem).
• Listing web addresses can change when the status changes.
• A sitemap “does not guarantee that all IDX pages will be indexed.”

The full side-by-side is in MLS iframe search vs custom IDX.

How Google decides which local business shows up first

Google says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” Google calls the third one “prominence.” Reviews, links to your site and a complete, verified Business Profile all help. Google also says: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google” (Google Business Profile Help).

What that means for a small brokerage:

• Fill in every part of your Google Business Profile. Add your categories, hours, photos and your website link.
• Ask for reviews every month. Steady new reviews beat a big push once a year.
• Get local links. Your chamber of commerce, local sponsorships and local news stories can all link to you.

If your profile got suspended, see how to reinstate your Google Business Profile.

How MLS Import helps a small brokerage with the listings piece

MLS Import pulls your MLS listings into your WordPress site as real pages on your own domain. It doesn’t use an iframe. Each listing gets its own web address, and the address, price, beds and baths sit right in your page where Google can read them. Your MLS has to approve the connection first.

What a small brokerage can set up:

• Show your office’s listings, or the whole market. An import task can filter by office MLS ID or agent MLS ID. On some MLSs the office fields are filled in more reliably than the agent fields. See importing one agent’s or one office’s listings.
• One office page plus agent pages. See office page and agent pages without duplicate listings.
• Leads go to the right agent. In standalone mode (MLS Import running on any theme), a property question goes to the agent linked to that listing. If no agent is linked, it goes to the company email. On WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes and WpEstate, the theme’s own forms decide where leads go. See where property leads are sent.
• Listing alerts. In standalone mode, buyers can save a search and get at most one email a day when a matching listing is added or updated. See saved searches on your own website.
• Auto update. Changed listings update once an hour. Listings that left the MLS get removed by a separate check once a day. See how the hourly auto update works.

How much does MLS Import cost?

$49 a month for one MLS, with a 30-day free trial. Plans for 3 MLS boards cost $99 a month, and plans for 7 boards cost $199 a month. Every plan has all the features. Yearly billing saves 15%. There’s no setup fee and no long-term contract, so you can cancel anytime. Your board’s own data fees are separate. See pricing.

Your full bill also includes hosting and the site work you need. Before you buy, you need a WordPress site, board approval, and the connection details your board provides. See the requirements before you buy.

What MLS Import does not fix

Getting your listings counted on your own domain gets you in the game. It doesn’t win it. Every brokerage on your MLS gets the same listing text, so listing pages alone rarely beat Zillow. As one agent said: “If there’s 10 agents using these sites, how exactly do you think you will outrank the next guy using the same service?”

These steps are on you, and none of them need our plugin:

• Claim and finish your Google Business Profile. Add photos and categories, and ask past clients for reviews every month.
• Make your domain the one link every agent shares. Give each agent a page like yourbrokerage.com/agents/jane. Put that link on cards, signatures and QR codes on yard signs.
• Tell buyers exactly what to type. “Search [Brokerage] [Town] homes” works better than “look us up.” Better yet, text them the link.
• Give buyers a reason to come back. Portals send alerts and show every listing. Your site needs alerts and full local search too, or buyers drift back to Zillow.
• Write local pages the portals don’t have. Neighborhood guides, recent sales, school and commute notes, and a first-time buyer FAQ. One agent said a site full of condo research “brought me 90% of my leads.”
• Fix your tracking. Check your analytics, track call and text clicks, and ask every new client how they found you.
• Give sellers a reason to call. Add a clear offer to talk about price, timing, and a sale plan, then check where the form goes.

More on this in SEO for imported listings and Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and Trulia vs agent websites.

Frequently asked questions about brokerage websites with no leads

Will importing our listings bring us traffic by itself?

No. It makes your listings count for your domain instead of a vendor’s. Traffic comes from your local pages, your Google map listing, your reviews and the links your agents share. As one agent said, “It is not, however, a miracle pill for your site.”

Our IDX vendor says our listings are indexable. How do we know?

Check it yourself. Open a listing, pick View Page Source, and search for the address. Then use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console, run a live test, and look at the page Google sees. If the details are missing or sit on the vendor’s domain, the claim isn’t true for your site. Also make sure your robots.txt file (a file that tells Google which pages to skip) doesn’t block your listing pages.

Why do our agents get leads from Zillow but our site gets none?

Because Zillow gets the search traffic and sells it back. Zillow averaged 235 million monthly unique users in 2025 (Zillow 2025 annual report). One agent summed it up: “we are paying companies to beat us in the search results so that they can sell the leads back to us.” Your site wins on the local detail Zillow doesn’t cover, and on the buyers your agents send there.

Should we make buyers sign up before they can see listings?

Not on the first click. Let buyers look at a few homes first, then ask. A sign-up wall on the first click can send buyers back to the portal app they already use. Test it on your own site: count sign-ups for a month with the wall set early, then a month with it set later.

How it works with MLS Import:

• MLS Import never puts up a sign-up wall on its own.
• In standalone mode, buyers can save a search with just a name and an email, and they confirm it by email. They don’t need an account.
• If you want a wall after a set number of listing views, use a theme that has one, such as WPResidence.

More detail: IDX lead capture on WordPress and saved searches belong on your own real estate website.

How fast should we answer a website lead?

As fast as you can, and you should measure it. We have not found a study we trust that gives one exact number, so test your own site. Send a test lead from a phone, write down who gets it, and time the reply. With MLS Import in standalone mode, the lead goes by email to the listing’s agent. If nobody reads that inbox, the lead is lost, so send leads to someone who checks every hour. If you need texting or drip emails, add a CRM. See sending property leads to a CRM.

Do we need to rebuild our whole website?

Not if your site runs on WordPress. MLS Import works with any WordPress theme in standalone mode. It also works more closely with WpResidence, WpEstate, Houzez and Real Homes. If your site is on Wix or another hosted builder, you can set up a WordPress site for the listings and your local pages, then point your domain to it. See WordPress vs Wix for real estate websites.

Can every agent have their own listing page on the brokerage site?

Yes. You can pull listings by agent MLS ID and give each agent a page on your domain. Each agent needs their own import task. See MLS Import for brokerages.

How long does it take to set up?

The plugin setup is short. The slow part is usually your MLS approving the data access, which can take days or weeks. See MLS approval processes that take time.

What else can our site do to keep buyers coming back?

Send them something useful. Saved search alerts keep buyers on your site instead of a portal. Our related guides cover saved searches on your own website and how to hear about a price drop before your buyer does.

What did you find when you searched your own brokerage name? Tell us in the comments!