Stats: Google releases summer 2010 White Paper for travel

June 28, 2010 By 6 Comments

The Google Travel team in the UK issued a report today outlining important metrics it is seeing on travel search queries and volumes for the summer period.

Key points revealed in the White Paper include click analysis, CPC rates, impact of the FIFA World Cup, seasonality and destination trends.

Click analysis:

  • Travel queries grown by 20% in the first six months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.
  • Air-related queries increased by almost a quarter.
  • Clicks on travel ads up 13% YTD on same period in 2009.

CPCs:

  • Cost-per-click rates fallen by average of 4% year-on-year YTD.
  • Hotel and car rates dropped by 7%.

World Cup:

  • Query volumes historically fall during the tournament, picking up as countries are eliminated from the competition.
  • In 2006 the number of queries dropped by 6% before bouncing back strongly after the event in August.

Seasonality:

  • Travel queries have peaked earlier before public holidays than they did in 2009.
  • This year queries reached a high 11 days before the May Bank Holiday weekend – four days before in 2009.
  • No spike in queries before the 2009 August public holiday, but period expected to behave more like 2007/8 this year with definite spikes.

Top destinations:

  • City breaks in Paris.
  • Short haul to Turkey and Spain.
  • Long haul to Australia, New York and Las Vegas.

Full copy of the White Paper.

Related posts:

  1. Stats – Big travel brands do not dominate natural search in Google
  2. Many more travel planning websites planned for 2010
  3. Lufthansa, JetBlue leave no paper trail with corporate-travel tool
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Kevin May About Kevin May

Kevin May is editor of Tnooz. He joined as a co-founder in August 2009 after spending nearly four years as editor of UK-based business publication Travolution.

Passionate about the business of travel and the internet, Kevin played a major role in establishing Travolution in print, online, events and with an annual awards programme, as well as becoming a regular speaker and moderator at industry events.

Prior to Travolution, Kevin was web editor at Media Week (UK) and also worked in regional newspapers for two years at the Essex Enquirer. He started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London.

Comments

  1. Pete Meyers says:
    June 28, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Fascinating stats.

    I wonder how AdWords travel advertisers’ conversion rates have evolved during this same period.

    If search volume is up 20% and clicks on travel ads are up 13%, does that indicate this is due to more searchers clicking for price comparison purposes but converting in lower volume? And are the lower CPC rates a product of reduced conversion?

    Reply
  2. GeorgeP says:
    June 30, 2010 at 9:26 am

    Will they release stats for the US?

    Reply
  3. Moore says:
    July 9, 2010 at 8:20 am

    Hi, any ideas where this has gone? If you click the link it goes to Google Docs and says “no preview available”

    Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

    Reply
    • Kevin May Kevin May says:
      July 9, 2010 at 9:15 am

      @moore – you need to be logged with a Google account, you can then download it. They appear to have taken the preview version down.

      try this

      Reply

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