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Will Avvo legal directory surpass lawyers.com in 2010?

December 11, 2009

The Seattle startup legal directory, Avvo, appears to have caught Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyers.com in the number of unique visitors per month. This per the below comparison I ran with Compete.com, a web traffic analysis service.

avvo versus lawyers traffic comparison

Avvo only trailed lawyers.com by 85,000 unique visitors in November (838,000 versus 753,000). In October the gap was even closer, a difference of 42,000 unique visitors (911,000 versus 869,000). It’s possible Martindale’s multi-million dollar national television ad campaign increased the gap slightly In November.

Perhaps more telling is the rate of growth for each website. Lawyers.com’s traffic is up 43% the last year while Avvo’s traffic is up 127%. You’d have to think Avvo is going to pass lawyers.com in unique visitors in the coming year.

This increased Avvo traffic is resulting in exposure for lawyers listed in the Avvo directory and participating in Avvo website features such as Avvo Answers and Advice. Lawyer contacts such as emails, phone calls or website visits from prospective clients totaled 160,000 last month, per Mark Britton, Avvo’s CEO.

Increased traffic is also resulting in increase sales at Avvo. I’m told their account managers have been fulfilling orders for their Avvo Pro product at a volume that was unexpected for the pre-holiday season.

Avvo may not be right for all lawyers (more focused on consumer & small business lawyers), and I have been critical of Avvo on some items, but there’s little question Avvo, with it’s rising traffic, is going to be included in lawyers’ Internet marketing buys and be a strong competitor to Martindale’s lawyers.com.

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