Real estate site Zillow has announced a collaboration with more than 180 newspapers across United States, a move which could help struggling local papers find new revenue sources, The New York Times reported.

The Seattle-based Zillow said it will loan its online real estate search engine to the newspapers. This allows Zillow to target the specific, focused markets of local newspapers, and the newspapers will recieve a share of the Zillow's revenue. The first 100 newspaper Web sites to utilize Zillow start today while the next 80 will be revealed throughout the year.

"Real estate is the most local product there is," said Spencer Rascoff, chief operating officer of Zillow, told The Times. "It would take us decades to build those local relationships. Rather than starting from scratch, we're partnering with someone who has distribution, but don't have the product."

Zillow's Web traffic has seen dramatic increase of the past months as the real estate market opens again, something Rascoff hopes the partnership with newspapers will facilitate.

Last month Zillow recorded 8.8 million unique visitors to its Web site, an increase of 70 percent from the same time in 2008. The partnership will help Zillow see out the decline in online advertising, its major source of revenue, according to The Times.

Trulia, a similar online real estate search engine and one of Zillow's competitors, also saw a recent increase in Web interest in its site, The Times reported. A similar partnership with the Washington Post was unveiled in February.