Press Enquiries

THINKPROPERTY.COM ANNOUNCES EXCLUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH LYCOS

31 October 2007

Thinkproperty.com, a major, independent consumer property portal which is ranked 4th* within the top 10 UK consumer property portals, has announced an exclusive partnership with Lycos, to power the home search within their new property channel, http://property.lycos.co.uk/. (*Source: Hitwise, August 2007)

Thinkproperty.com will power the Lycos Homes search facility, which will allow users to search through over 560,000 UK and overseas properties. The combined websites have an audience of over 11 million users*, with over 1 million unique users for thinkproperty.com and 10.7 million for Lycos. (*Source: Hitbox September 07 and ComScore October 07).

Fiona Smith, Senior Agency Account Manager at Lycos comments: “This new partnership with thinkproperty.com strengthens our consumer offering. By joining forces with thinkproperty.com, we can offer our users access to over 560,000 homes for sale or rent. We were deeply impressed by the search functionality of thinkproperty.com and we believe we have selected the premier property portal for our new property channel.”

Suzanne Deakins, Head of Group Marketing at thinkproperty.com comments: “We are delighted to announce the exclusive partnership with Lycos and are very pleased to add Lycos to our partnership portfolio. This offers benefits to both vendors and property agents as we can now promote our stock across an audience of over 8 million.

“This is the first of a series of partnerships we are developing over the coming months to promote the thinkproperty.com brand to new users.”

The partnership includes a permanent left-hand navigation bar link on the homepage, weekly rotating promotion boxes on the homepage, women's channel, men's channel and lifestyle channel and run-of-site display advertising on lycos.co.uk and its partner sites.

Thinkproperty.com has enjoyed phenomenal growth over the last few months, having moved from position 420 in December 2006 to position 4*, with over 1.3 million unique users a month. (Source: Hitwise, August 2007).

Thinkproperty.com now holds over 560,000 properties from the UK and overseas. thinkproperty.com is currently working with over 5,700 agents who are uploading their stock to the site who benefit from an increasing number of potential buyers/tenants and leads originating from the property portal.

Thinkproperty.com is the only major portal placing Web 2.0 methodology at the heart of its functionality, with Google mapping and property ranking and RSS being core features.

GMG Property Services Group wholly owns and operates thinkproperty.com, as well as Vebra and Core Systems, both providers of estate agency software. GMG Property Services is a leading supplier of sales and marketing solutions for the UK property market, which improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agents and ultimately, drive more profit.

For further details call 0845 073 0060 or email info@thinkproperty.com.

- Ends -

For further information, please contact:

Karen Hughes/Caroline Burnell
The Drum Consultancy
Tel: +44 (0)20 7025 8044
Fax: +44 (0)20 7025 8100

Note to Editors:

• thinkproperty.com is wholly owned by GMG Property Services Group, a new division within Guardian Media Group.)
• GMG Property Services Group also owns Vebra, the UK’s no1 provider of estate agency software and UK’s no2 Business and Finance - Property website*. (*Source: Hitwise, March 2007)
• Guardian Media Group plc ('GMG') is one of the UK's leading multimedia companies. Its diverse portfolio includes:
  • Guardian News & Media: the Guardian and Observer newspapers and the Guardian Unlimited network of websites.
  • GMG Regional Media: the Manchester Evening News, a number of other regional newspapers in the North West and South of England, the Channel M city TV station and the Manchester Online website.
  • GMG Radio: 13 regional radio stations by the end of 2007 under the Real Radio, Smooth Radio, Century FM and Rock Radio brands.
  • Trader Media Group: one of Europe's largest specialist print and online media companies, and publisher of the Auto Trader magazine and website.
  • Trader Media Group is jointly owned by GMG and Apax Partners, with GMG as the majority shareholder.
  • GMG Property Services Group: Vebra, the UK’s leading provider of software to independent estate agents and thinkproperty.com, the consumer-facing portal.
• GMG is wholly owned by the Scott Trust, which was created in 1936 to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity.