Australian consumers aren’t going online to search and compare home loan finance options, new research has revealed.
An analysis of Hitwise search traffic data for the eight major online comparison industries in Australia revealed that personal finance is the least searched industry, attracting just under three million average monthly visits from January to May this year.
In addition, research conducted by leading comparison website finder.com.au – which involved analysing the traffic for three leading websites in each category – also found that visitors were 18-times more likely to search for real estate online, making it the most popular industry and averaging almost 53 million monthly visits.
This was followed by jobs, which saw Australians searching 15-times more than personal finance with 43.6 million monthly visits, while cars and gambling were search seven-times more.
Michelle Hutchison, money expert at finder.com.au says these results are disappointing.
“Buying a property is probably the biggest purchase in your lifetime, so it perplexes me that people are not making the effort to do more cost-savings research in this area online. Comparing home loans is just as important, if not more than comparing property online,” she said.
“Even Flights and Hotel industries both attract more searches than Personal Finance, despite cost savings may be minimal in this space compared to banking products.”
