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Travel industry experiences decline in paid search
April 30, 2009
Last week I highlighted the overall decline in the UK paid search rate over the last 12 months, and focused on the retail sector in particular. I also promised to provide similar analysis for some other industries, so here is the paid search data for the UK online travel market.
The percentage of Travel websites’ search traffic that comes via paid clicks has declined over the last 12 months, from 25.4% in March 2008 to 21.7% in March 2009. As the chart and table below illustrate, the rates and declines vary by travel sub-sector. In particular, websites in our Agencies category (which includes both traditional and online players such as Expedia) are most reliant on paid search traffic, but have also experienced the steepest decline over the last 12 months. The declines in the Transport (i.e. airlines, trains, car hire, etc.) and Destinations and Accommodation (which includes both hotel aggregator provider sites) sectors have been less severe – although both are less reliant on paid search than the Agencies category.
Looking at the decline in actual upstream traffic from paid search, rather than just the paid search rate, provides further perspective. As the table below illustrates, the percentage of the Travel sector’s overall traffic that comes from paid search declined from 11.6% in March 2009 to 9.3% in March 2009.
Again, the biggest impact has been on the Agencies sector, which experienced a drop from 20.6% to 14.4%. While this has been party offset by an increase in the amount of natural / organic search traffic the industry receives, it has still contributed to an overall decline in traffic from search engines. In March 2008, 41.1% of Agencies’ upstream traffic came from search; by March 2009 this had declined to 37.9%.
Posted by Robin Goad at 09:50 AM
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In Categories Economy | Paid search | Search | Travel
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Comments
TIP:
If you had a tool that gave a glimpse at data that was free to try without completing a form or signing up, you would increase your subscriptions.
Everyone know Hitwise has a miracle tool.
But you need to provide a sample.
I'd be willing to bet this would increase subscriptions by 10-20%
The key is to make it offer value, while not give away too much.
Many online tools give a sample of date, like the top 5, or limit the results to 10 keywords, etc
Find a way to give away value, but just a sample, and you've just increase interest and customers.
Posted by robin | May 5, 2009 02:20 AM
Thanks for the comment, Robin.
We do indeed provide sample data via our Data Centre, which is updated avery week.
http://www.hitwise.co.uk/resources/data-center.php
It included top websites, search engines and search terms - plus fast moving search terms and industry specific data from the travel and retail sectors.
Posted by Robin Goad | May 5, 2009 01:00 PM
Interesting analysis. It is a shame you spelt accommodation so badly, though!
Posted by Jerome | May 7, 2009 03:07 PM
Well spotted Jerome - chart has been updated!
Thanks, Robin
Posted by Robin Goad | May 7, 2009 03:25 PM
Is it just me or do the two charts and data tables look identical? Is the bottom chart supposed to show the decline in the Travel sector’s overall traffic that comes from paid search rather than by category? The top chart still has a typo on it as well.
Posted by Jonathan Walker | May 29, 2009 09:37 AM
Sorry Jonathan! I've corrected the chart now, so hopefully it makes sense. Seem to have got myself confused making the previous changes because of the typos, etc...
Posted by Robin Goad | May 29, 2009 04:55 PM
Interesting post. It would have been interested to measure in parallele the organic traffic against the paid traffic.
Agencies are massively feeling the recession.
I work in the recruitment industry, and I would be interested to know if I can find the same trend in the overall recruitment industry.
Posted by Philippe Oger | April 30, 2009 10:02 AM