Traffic to Rightmove fell markedly on Saturday afternoon during the Grand National.

Traffic to the website via desktop dropped by 15% when Pineau De Re romped home around 4.30pm. Traffic from mobile devices dipped 12%.

But by 4.45pm traffic was back to normal, and on Saturday the site recorded over 2m visits.

Matthew James, head of communications at Rightmove, commented: “This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a stand-out sporting event hit our traffic.

“It happened last year when Andy Murray served for Wimbledon glory and in 2012 when we picked up three dips on Super Saturday which tallied perfectly with Greg Rutherford, Jess Ennis and Mo Farah winning gold.

“These are national distractions which show up as blips on our traffic charts, but it doesn’t take long for people to come back after the event finishes.”

However, Rightmove was among the fallers in the City yesterday as the shares dipped 78p (3%) on a day when the going was decidedly soft for the housing market, with the shares of many house builders taking a tumble.

Shares in the long-time favourite ended the day at just under £25 compared with around £28 at the start of 2014.

The fall was blamed on a report by the HomeOwners Alliance which said people think surging house prices are “a very serious issue”.

But the betting is that housing-related stocks will soon be up and running again.