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

Your site went live months ago. Your agents tell buyers to look you up. Still, the site gets almost no visits and almost no leads. This happens to solo agents, teams and brokerages alike. 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.

Why does my realtor website get almost no visitors from Google?

Most agent websites get few Google visits for a few plain reasons. Google can’t read your listings, Google was told to stay away, or your pages say the same thing Zillow says. A solo agent’s site, a team site and a brokerage site go quiet for the same reasons, so the checks on this page work for all three.

The usual causes are listed under “Why do buyers who ‘look us up’ never reach our website?” below. One agent said it plainly: “almost ALL website providers promise great SEO. That’s simply not true.”

Google Search Console, Google’s free tool for site owners, shows you which one you have:

Start with three pages: your home page, one area guide and one active listing. Check each one on its own. A listing problem doesn’t tell you why an area guide gets no visits.

Straight talk: we make MLS Import, a WordPress plugin. It fixes one piece of this, the listings piece: it brings your MLS listings into WordPress as pages on your own domain. The other fixes are your own work, and most of them are free and don’t need a plugin. Run the 30-minute check below to find your cause before you pay anyone to fix it.

Why am I paying so much every month for a real estate website that brings me no leads?

You are usually paying for the site to exist, not for the things that make leads. 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. Monthly plans often cover a template, hosting and an IDX feed, not visitors or follow-up. Nothing is wrong with how hard you work.

Ask your website company for the last 90 days of visits, calls, form sends and booked appointments, or open your analytics, and find your row:

Then ask what the monthly fee pays for. If your listings come from a framed IDX feed, they may be building the vendor’s site, not yours. 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.

Why does my real estate website get visitors but no sign-ups?

Visitors leave without signing up when your site gives them no reason to leave their name. A plain “Contact us” form asks a lot and gives little back. Buyers sign up for something they want: an email when a home they like hits the market, a saved search, or a quick answer about one home.

Run these checks on your phone, signed out:

1. Open your home page. Can you reach the home search in one tap?
2. Open a listing. Can you ask about that home or book a tour right on the page?
3. Look for a way to save a search and get new listing emails. If there is none, buyers go back to the Zillow app for their alerts.
4. Watch a listing page load. If you are waiting, so are your buyers.
5. Check that your analytics counts form sends. If it doesn’t, you can’t tell a traffic problem from a sign-up problem.

One agent described what changed after moving the search to their own site: “Within a month of moving, we had clients actually using the search on our site and not zillow.”

With MLS Import in standalone mode (MLS Import running on any WordPress theme), each listing page gets a booking sidebar with a Schedule a Tour tab and an Ask a Question tab. Both send an email to whoever the listing routes leads to. See Schedule a Tour and the booking sidebar. Saved searches and sign-up walls are covered in the FAQ below.

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.
• Your site tells Google to stay out. On WordPress, one checkbox in the settings can hide your whole site.

One fix that works on the address and area searches the portals win: give each area you know a page of its own. “Homes for sale in [big city]” goes to the portals, but subdivision, condo building and neighborhood searches are where a local agent can show up. See how neighborhood pages help a small brokerage get found.

Why does our team website get almost no traffic from people searching for homes in our area?

Because the big area searches go to Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin, and your team site shows the same homes they do. Your team can still win the smaller searches: subdivisions, condo buildings, ZIP codes and price ranges. Win them with facts about a place you know well that a national portal covers only broadly.

As one agent put it: “Zillow and others have not yet gotten into the specifics of our local area, that’s where each agent has the advantage.”

With MLS Import, you don’t build these area pages by hand. The city, ZIP, county and subdivision names in your MLS feed become pages on your site by themselves, and new listings show up on them. Your team still writes the local notes. No plugin can promise you a spot above Zillow or Redfin, ours included. See which local searches an independent brokerage can win against Zillow and Redfin.

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.

Will listings on my own website ever get me leads if Zillow always ranks first?

Yes, but not from the big searches. Your listings won’t win “homes for sale in [town]” from Zillow, and they don’t need to. They catch the people who reach your site another way: referrals, past clients, people who type your name, your Google map listing and small local searches. Without listings on your site, those people leave to search on Zillow.

What happens if you skip them? A referred buyer looks you up, finds no homes to search, and goes back to the Zillow app. There, the contact button often goes to an agent who paid for that ZIP code, not to you. One agent put the job of listings plainly: “IDX isn’t there for traffic but I think it’s essential to appear like a real estate website.”

Judge it by inquiries, tours and signed buyers from the site, and ask every new client how they found you. See why your buyers search Zillow instead of your website.

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 seven 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.
7. Make sure your site isn’t hiding from Google. In WordPress, go to Settings, then Reading. If the box “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is ticked, untick it and save. Then open the Pages report in Google Search Console, Google’s free tool for site owners. It lists the pages Google left out and why. A reason like “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” means a setting told Google to skip that page. (Noindex is a tag that asks Google not to show a page.)

What to ask your website company before you renew

Start with what the bill should be. A solo agent’s own WordPress site with MLS Import costs $49 a month for the plugin, plus hosting and your board’s own data fee, which differs by board. Hosted IDX platforms charge $60 to $599 a month for the subscription alone, often with a $99 to $750 setup fee. If you pay several hundred a month, ask what the extra money buys that brings in a lead.

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 with check 4 above.
2. What does the monthly fee include? Hosting and the IDX feed only, or also writing, SEO work or ads? Which line of the bill sends us visitors? If none does, you are paying for looks.
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?
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. For “realtor near me,” the map box at the top of Google gets most of the clicks. 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 brokerage, local lenders, inspectors, 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. A separate daily check removes listings that left the MLS, if you turn it on. See how the hourly auto update works.

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.

I’m a solo agent, not a brokerage. Do these checks work for my own website?

Yes. Every check on this page works on a solo agent’s site: the name search, the site: search, View Page Source, the WordPress settings check and the test lead. A solo site usually goes quiet for the same reasons a brokerage site does.

A few things differ for a solo agent:

• Search your own full name, plus your name with your town, signed out on a phone.
• Check whether your brokerage’s agent page shows up above your own site. That’s normal, so make sure it links to you.
• Your IDX may come from your broker’s vendor. Click one listing and look at the address bar. If it jumps to another domain, Google credits the listings to that vendor.
• Start with 5 to 10 pages about the areas you really know. A few deep area pages beat fifty pages that only swap the town name.

MLS Import works on a solo agent’s WordPress site the same way it does for a brokerage. You need your own approval from your MLS, and one site can connect up to 7 MLS boards on a multi-MLS plan. See who can use MLS Import and the requirements before you buy.

I’ve been blogging about my area for a year. Why is my traffic still almost zero?

A year of writing is not wasted. It usually just needs a new target. Most area blogs get no traffic for five reasons: the search is already owned by Zillow and big city guides, the post says what a hundred other posts say, Google answers the question itself, nobody links to you, and your posts don’t point to a page buyers can use.

Should I keep blogging or build neighborhood pages instead?

Do both, but build the pages first. A neighborhood page with live listings is where a buyer lands and acts. Blog posts answer the small local questions and send readers to that page. Start with the 3 to 5 areas where you close the most deals, then write posts that link back to them.

If your guides rank but readers leave without contacting you, open your top guide on a phone. Can a buyer see current homes in that area and ask you a question without hunting for a button? Link the guide to a filtered home search, add your name and a simple showing request, then test the form. A high ranking alone doesn’t mean the reader is ready to call.

What local content brings leads, not just page views?

Content that answers a question someone asks before a showing or a sale: which homes fit a budget, what changed in a condo building, or how fast similar homes sold. Pick a few neighborhoods you serve well, use your own local facts, and end with a clear next step, such as a showing question. Put current homes beside the answer when they help. Then track visits, inquiries and real conversations, and fix the weakest step. The page type alone, native listing pages included, doesn’t prove anyone will become a client.

MLS Import can fill your area pages with live listings from your MLS, on your own domain. It doesn’t write your posts, earn your links or create demand. Your local words next to the listings are what make the page different.

Frequently asked questions about brokerage websites with no leads

A developer set up my site a few months ago and I’ve had zero sign-ups from Google. What am I doing wrong?

Most likely nothing you do each day. Zero sign-ups a few months after launch usually comes from one of three things: Google was told to stay away while the site was built, your listings count for someone else’s site, or buyers visit but find no reason to sign up. Run the 30-minute check above, then add three checks a new build often misses:

• Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. If it says “Disallow: /”, Google is told to skip the whole site. Ask your developer to remove that line.
• Search your name on a phone and open your Google map listing. Make sure its website link points to your live domain, not an old or test address.
• Fill in your sign-up form from your phone and follow it to the final inbox or CRM. A broken form looks just like zero sign-ups.

If people never arrive, work on local pages and the links your agents share. If they arrive but never ask, give them a reason to sign up, like a saved search that emails them new homes.

Should I cancel my real estate website if it brings me no leads?

Not before you find which step is broken. Pull 90 days of visits, sign-ups and replies first. If the site is mostly a page referrals check before they call, a cheaper setup can do that job. If you do cancel, check your contract for auto-renew and fees, and ask who owns the domain, the pages and your lead list.

One agent who left a brokerage platform put it this way: “When I left after 4 years, I had nothing and had to start over from scratch.” With MLS Import, your imported listings stay in WordPress as normal posts if you stop paying. Only the updates and removals stop, so remove those listings to stay within your MLS rules. See what you keep and what you lose when you leave a vendor.

How long until my real estate website gets visitors from Google?

No one can honestly promise you a date. A site a few months old with almost no Google visits is common. Don’t just wait, though: run the checks on this page first, because waiting won’t fix a site Google can’t see. Fixing a hidden site, like a ticked WordPress box or a framed IDX, can show up in Search Console soon after Google visits your site again. Area pages and links from other sites take longer, and nobody can say exactly how long.

How to track it without guessing:

• Write down this month’s clicks and pages from the Search Console Performance report before you change anything.
• Check the same report once a month, not every day.
• Count real buyer and seller inquiries from the site, booked appointments and signed clients, along with what you spent. Leads are the proof, not rankings.
• Keep the same checks before and after a change. If you also change your ads or agent follow-up, write that down too, so you can tell which change helped.
• Use social media, your sphere and open houses for leads while you wait.

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.

I build websites for real estate agents. Why do my clients get so few leads even after I add a property search?

A property search gives buyers something to browse. It does not make leads by itself. Leads also need people who find the site, a reason to leave a name, and someone who answers fast. When a client says the website doesn’t work, one of those is usually missing, not the search. Check visits, search use, property views, form sends and real replies, in that order, and fix the first step that fails. Every check on this page works on a client’s site.

Before you hand the site over, send one test lead with your client on the phone. Agree on who gets it and how fast they reply. Many “the website doesn’t work” calls are really a lead sitting in an inbox nobody reads.

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!