In October 2011, about a month after the buzz around the launch of Google Flight Search and (kind of) subsided, Tnooz published traffic share figures for the fledgling service.
The data obtained from Experian Hitwise revealed a slow start for Google’s first official foray into flight search, with the service ranked number 391 in the list of most popular travel sites in the US.
In comparison, Kayak, one of the company most publicly opposed to Google’s acquisition of ITA Software 12 months earlier, was in 17th position.
Not much to worry about, then?
Four months on, how is Google doing now (admittedly still without a fully-baked product, but with heaps of exposure)?
Brand Position in list of US travel sites - September 2011 Position in list of US travel sites - January 2012 Market share of US metasearch category - January 2012
Kayak 17 14 52.56%
Bing Travel 30 37 18.24%
Farecompare 111 131 3.49%
Google Flight Search 391 368 1.00%
Hipmunk 974 1,034 0.26%
Mobissimo 1,359 1,395 0.17%
Other brands not included in the table, but where data is available for January 2012, include:
- Skyscanner (496th position, 0.68% market share)
- Fly.com (73rd position, 6.83% market share)
- Cheapflights (54th position, 11.81% market share)
As pointed out in October last year, Google is still only focusing on domestic routes, but since then it has started throwing search results higher into SERPS.
The worry will not be felt at Kayak just yet, but perhaps Google’s arch rival Bing (which is powered by Kayak!) will be wondering what happens when Google Flight Search does finally get a full suite of routes and destinations, especially to cities outside of the US.
As for Hipmunk and Mobissimo? Legitimate questions can be asked as to what is the strategy to claw back some of the tiny levels of market share they had before Google started gaining a scintilla of traction.
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About Kevin May
No major heat at WhichBudget Towers, although we are keeping an eye on the water boiling. Google is fast, it is sleek, it is user friendly, but is it comprehensive? Only as far as ITA software will take it, which is amazing but there are so many airlines out there not available on GDS systems. We are hoping to fill in the gap.
@martino – worth bearing in mind that GFS has not entered any markets outside of the US yet.
Sure, and I admit we are not that strong in the US to be able to find examples of routes not present in GDSs but can give plenty of examples here in Europe and a few in Asia too.
Position of hipmunk a good demonstration why it takes more than a jazzy UI and big marketing spend to make a successful travel site.
@tony – not sure if there has been big marketing spend by Hipmunk (compared to, say, other metas), just clever use of affiliate banner ad marketing.
Flight search is interesting. It will be interesting to see how the more or less established players will react, especially with its international opening. I say good luck and will watch attentively.
We are actually also looking forward to see what will happen with Google Hotel Finder, which isn’t yet available in Europe neither.
@pierre – thx for the comment.
Sorry to correct you but Hotel Finder has been slowly rolling out in other non-US markets for a while now.
Maybe it just isn’t getting much pick-up yet.
Yes, that is correct, since the end of october 2011, actually.
What I meant was it isn’t really adapted to the regional needs: The only language is English and booking (from what i’ve seen) can only be made through international OTAs, e.g. booking.com.
Sorry for the “false alarm”
@kevin, great stats!
Each site has its own set of bells and whistles but these are essentially undifferentiated products. They all offer a set of flights sorted by the cheapest. Excuse the academic reasoning
but the interactions among firms under this condition are governed by Bertrand Competition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_competition) and wil most likely lead to Google’s domination over the long run.
This would have happened even if ITA would have stayed an independent company!
I’ll venture to guess that this time this year, google will have a double digit share of the market, taking at least half of it from the current market leader, Kayak.
By that time a smaller lesser known company will have also entered the space (and ranking!) with a highly differentiated product, like a personalized flight search service like http://www.superfly.com, full disclosure, I’m the founder of Superfly.
So far, Google Flight Search seems to make it more difficult for OTAs to advertise on flight search. If OTAs are ultimately limited in their advertising options for flights then it will be increasingly difficult for OTAs to promote and sell flights. Everyone in the travel business is looking to see if Google uses its dominant position at the top of the user journey to completely change travel distribution. Flight comparison services will continue to add value by providing another comparison view of the marketplace, but companies that sell flights for a living should still be very concerned.
@aaron – interesting. Many thought it would be metas, alongside OTAs, which would be hit.
I suspect metas with existing traction and brand will be the least likely to suffer. Initially, anyway.
A lot, or probably most, of the “heat” that competing sites will feel depends on how people are finding them. If they depend on people discovering their site by searching on Google for some version of “cheap flights to …” then the site will suffer. If the site is strong and receives most traffic directly or through people searching for the brand name (as is our case) I would argue that they have less to be worried about.
@johann – thx for chiming in here…
Does Dohop get that much traffic from people searching for the brand name?
Answer-without-divulging-too-much-secret-info is Yes, very much so. Of course, with Google Analytics now listing quite a bit of the keywords as “(not provided)” the actual numbers are getting harder to know, but the answer is still Yes. A very high amount of search traffic comes in on our brand name as keyword.