EasyJet tops Greenlight paid-search analysis

EasyJet has the greatest share of paid search on Google, according to the latest study from search-marketing agency Greenlight.

Greenlight has added a paid-search review to its regular look at natural-search visibility on Google – the latest based on more than 77 million searches for flight-related terms in the second quarter of the year.

The most-visible website in natural-search results during May was cheapflights.co.uk, reaching 92% of the search audience, followed by skyscanner.net (64%) and travelsupermarket.com (48%). While aggregators dominate the top five, direct providers feature in the top ten – with ryanair.com at number six on 31% visibility.

EasyJet.com topped the table for generic keywords, with ryanair.com and british airways.com also in the top 10. Cheapflights.co.uk took pole position when looking at destination keywords – short haul, long haul and domestic.

The paid-search section of the report determines an advertiser’s “share of voice” based on how often they appear on Google, which ad position they bid for and the search volume generated for the keywords they bid on. The ranking represents visibility across the top 120 keywords in June.

EasyJet had the greatest share of voice in paid search with 14%, followed by Opodo with a 13% share. Thomas Cook-owned netflights had a 12% share.

The paid-search section is also broken down into short haul, long haul and generic. For short haul, Greenlight reports: “Ryanair and Monarch compete well in natural search . . . it appears they don’t target the paid channel.”

Only 16 of the top 80 advertisers in the paid-search space appear among the top-80 sites visible in natural search.

The study also looks at bidding patterns over the course of a week. Most travel-related queries are made on Mondays. The fewest are made over the weekend, with Saturday seeing the least number of queries.

Drilling down further into paid-search patterns, Greenlight looked at activity on a single day – Saturday June 6. While many advertisers do not differentiate between times of day, some businesses – such as Booking Buddy and Travel Republic – focus their bidding overnight. However, Cheapflights drops off the radar between midnight and 08.00, but has by far the greatest share of voice between midday and 20.00.

Access the report in full, click here.