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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America
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Flight Searches Vary Dramatically by Engine
August 19, 2009
We often hear about how search engines compare in market share of searches or relevance of search results but what about query content? Analysis of query content for the travel category reveals that the search terms consumers use on the leading search engines (Google.com, Bing.com and Search.Yahoo.com) vary greatly.
Take for example the following Hitwise Search Term Variations report for the words "flights to". This report shows all of the different search terms that consumers entered into search engines last week that included the keywords "flights to".
When we filter that report by Search Engine, we can see dramatic differences in the "flights to" queries performed on the different engines. For example, as the following table illustrates, Florida figures prominently among Google users, with "flights to Florida" and "cheap flights to Florida" ranking #1 and #2 among Google searches that include the words "flights to". A Florida related query doesn't appear until #14 on Yahoo! Search. On Bing.com, a search for flights to Orlando comes in at #4, but the word Florida isn't included in a "flights to" query until #59.
Similar differences are evident in hotel related searches. A report on search terms that include the word "hotel" (filtered to include only destination related searches rather than brand names) puts Las Vegas, Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach and Atlantic City at the top of Google hotel searches. Among Bing users, New York comes in at #2.
One reason for these differences might be the suggestions the search engines offer as one types in a query. It is important for search marketers to tailor search campaigns by search engine to reflect these differences in query content.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 04:59 PM
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Comments
This also may very well be an indication of which market segment uses which search engine
Posted by anja | August 24, 2009 12:44 PM
It's an interesting post, thanck you.
Indeed, Search marketers would not simply copy paste campain from Google to Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter.
I add to your recommandation that search marketers would do a different benchmark of advertising (in order to write different adds than the others advertisers) according to the search engine because all the advertisers are not present on all search engine.
Posted by Brice Bottégal | August 20, 2009 05:38 PM