"In website terms, it's what's called a 'mash-up', and where a site pulls in data from other sources, " explains company co-director, Brian Fallon.

"We are tied in with Google's mapping service, merging that with geographic data from An Post, and mashing that with our list of properties for sale."

Each property comes up as a small blue icon on the map and when a visitor clicks on it, relevant details . . . price, number of bedrooms and image . . .

appear beside it.

"The idea came about when a colleague wanted to buy a home near the canal and needed to see everything that was on offer in that category.

Equally, if someone wants to live by the sea, they can click along the coast and properties will pop up on the screen. It also lets buyers see where a property is located in reality . . . often new developments are listed with 'better' addresses than might be the case."

All of the major urban centres are mapped, with a total of 17,000 homes listed on the website. "This figure is almost 6,000 more than our nearest competitor. Many of these homes have never been advertised online before, so finding a bargain has just become that bit easier and it offers viewers a much bigger choice." This latest development in the service marks the company' growth with its user base since the Fallon brothers first set up Daft. ie in l997, initially geared towards the younger rental market, and then progressing towards additional residential, commercial and overseas properties for sale.

"The idea was to provide an efficient way of finding rental property and housemates online, but that changed in tandem with the booming market. Those who were renting then became first-time buyers, while at the other end, the landlords have become the property investors." Over 1,000 estate agents and over 40,000 landlords are now listed.

The Daft. ie website has won a number of awards including Digital Media Brand of the Year and Best International eBusiness Website. In 2005, its customers applied for over 3bn in mortgages. In May of this year, a report by ABC Electronic confirmed that the website was Ireland's busiest with requests for 27.6 million pages of information received as page impressions, well ahead of highest figures for household names such as Eircom (22 million), RTE (22 million) and rival property website, MyHome. ie (18 million) in preceding months.