SEATTLE, Oct. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Real estate Web site Zillow.com® today announced the launch of the Zillow® Professional Directory, a new resource for real estate professionals to market their services to Zillow's millions of visitors, for free. The Zillow Professional Directory helps consumers interested in buying, selling or conducting home renovations, to find and connect with a local professional to fit their needs.

At launch, the Zillow Professional Directory includes the more than 150,000 real estate professionals who currently have an active profile on Zillow. The Directory is open to any professional who caters to local homeowners, buyers or sellers, including real estate agents, stagers, lenders, contractors, landscapers or architects. Consumers can then search for professionals by specialty, business name, city, ZIP code or neighborhood.

"This is a free opportunity for local professionals to market their services to Zillow's millions of visitors - 90 percent of whom own a home, and two-thirds who are buying or selling now or in the near future. In today's challenging market, it's a no-brainer," said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Zillow's vice president of partner relations.

Zillow opened the site up for community contributions in late 2006, and since then has continued to add new features to help enhance the interaction on the site between professionals and consumers seeking home-related information. The Zillow Professional Directory follows suit as it provides a direct way for professionals to get in front of local consumers seeking help. By listing in the Directory, professionals market themselves to one of the largest consumer real estate audiences on the Web - Zillow logged more than 5.4 million unique visitors in September 2008, a 42 percent year-over-year increase in traffic.

To participate in the Directory, professionals simply need to register on Zillow.com, which will automatically prompt them to create a free profile page, and identify their focus areas and expertise.

The free profile can be enhanced with photos, links to live listings, personal Web sites or video, and narrative. Additionally, any of a professional's contributions to Zillow, including listings, Home Q&A or Zillow Discussions posts, link back to their Directory profile.

To learn more about creating a Zillow professional profile, and other free professional marketing opportunities, click "RE Pros" at the bottom of any Zillow.com page, or visit http://www.zillow.com/learnmore/why-use-zillow.htm

About Zillow.com

Zillow.com is an online real estate community where homeowners, buyers, sellers, real estate agents and mortgage professionals find and share vital information about homes, for free. Launched in early 2006 with Zestimate values and data on millions of U.S. homes, Zillow has since opened the site to community input, data and dialogue. One of the most-visited U.S. real estate Web sites, Zillow's goal is to help people become smarter about real estate in every stage of the home ownership process -- buying, selling, remodeling and financing. The company is headquartered in Seattle and has raised $87 million in funding.

Zillow.com and Zillow are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc.

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SOURCE: Zillow.com

CONTACT: Elizabeth O'Connor of Zillow.com, +1-206-757-4202,
press@zillow.com

Web Site: http://www.zillow.com/