Rightmove: UK focus group shows no sign of AI disruption in real-world search behaviour

Research evidence excerpt

Rightmove: UK focus group shows no sign of AI disruption in real-world search behaviour

1 July 2026

Annick Maas

+44 20 7676 6683

European Media annick.maas@bernsteinsg.com

Christophe CherblancRightmove

+41 582 723 540

Rating christophe.cherblanc@bernsteinsg.com

Outperform Christopher Pancur

+44 20 7676 7280

Price Target christopher.pancur@bernsteinsg.com

RMV.LN 563.00 GBp Specialist Sales

Kiran Shah, CFA

+44 20 3547 1533

kiran.shah@bernsteinsg.com

Rightmove: UK focus group shows no sign of AI disruption in real-

world search behaviour

Rightmove’s share price is down -15% YTD among others due to the investor’s fear that AI will

Close Date 30 Jun 2026

disrupt the portal. What does the actual Rightmove user think? For the sake of this report, we

RMV.LN Close Price (GBp) 438.20

have run a UK wide focus group with 29 participants asking three questions and we learned

Price Target (GBp) 563.00

that:

Upside/(Downside) 28%

Trust, breadth of inventory and referrals were the main reasons as to why people have 52-Week Range 827.00/391.40

preferred using Rightmove over LLMs in their property research over the L12M. Trust was EDME 1,596.71

among the most frequent reasons quoted as to why property hunters were using RMV, with FYE Dec

a lot of them having been referred to the website by friends or family. Several users said Div Yield 2.4%

they “didn’t even think” to use an LLM for property search, while others framed ChatGPT as Market Cap (GBP) (M) 3,267

useful for advice, area comparisons or understanding the buying process, but not for finding EV (GBp) (M) 3,231

specific, up-to-date properties. That matters because the AI bear case assumes a consumer Performance YTD 1M 6M 12M

behaviour shift that, based on this work, has not yet materialised. Absolute (%) (15.7) 4.4 (15.7) (44.4)