Loading ...Web 2.0 sites and initiatives have generated a lot of buzz lately, and we are receiving a lot of inquiries from hoteliers rergarding the status and future of search engine marketing, and the search engines in general in this new Web 2.0 environment. Are Web 2.0 sites going to replace the search engines as an advertising media? Will online travel consumers abandon Google as a travel planning research tool and shift their attention to Web 2.0 sites such as TripAdvisor.com and YouTube.com?
We believe that Web 2.0 is not a threat to established search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, and here is why:
- Search engines thrive on new content. Web 2.0 is a huge generator of new content, to the great satisfaction of search bots like the Google bot, etc. The search engines are indexing Web 2.0 sites with great gusto and are serving Web 2.0-related content (text, video, consumer reviews, blog entries, etc) in the search engine results, together with traditional web pages.
- Specialized blog engines like technorati.com, blogpulse.com, etc could not and did not gain the critical mass required to replace or at least threaten the established search engines like Google and Yahoo.
- Online travel consumers love to shop around and in average visit 3.5-4 travel-related sites before making a booking. Indeed, Web 2.0 sites have increased their share in the travel planning process, but still travel planning is done predominantly on traditional travel sites–both supplier and intermediary sites.
- In previous postings we have mentioned our thesis about the “ideological clash” between official and unofficial (consumer-generated) content. Online travel consumers need two reference points:
–one one side, how does the travel supplier describe its own products/services i.e. this is the official content
–on the other, what is the experience of your peers (as well as your friends/relatives) with this
particular travel supplier and its hotel/resort i.e. this is the unofficial content out there - For many of our clients we use state-of-the-art website analytical and campaign tracking tools and we monitor closely where do the websites visitors and online bookers came from, what are their behavioral and pathing patterns, etc.
–Consistently over 50% of visitors to the site originate from the search engines. Actually this percentage varies greatly (48%-70.5%), based on property type, customer segmentation, location, budget allocations, management, etc.
–We have not noticed any decline in search engine contributions to traffic and bookings over the past several years. - The emergence of travel meta search engines over the past several years (kayak.com, farechase.com, sidestep.com, etc) is a confirmation of the viability of search engines in travel. To a great extent the online intermediaries fulfill the role of meta search engines Ex. Expedia claims that over 40% of its visitors research travel on the site, and then end up booking on travel suppliers’ sites.
What are your thoughts about Web 2.0 and its implications for the search engines and how travel consumers research and plan travel online?
