Turkey was the most searched for destination in July, according to Greenlight’s regular look at Google natural search results for the UK market. Greenlight analysed 3,200 keywords in the holiday category for the June, July and August period. In total, these terms delivered 29m searches to UK users – around 9m in June, 11m in July and…
Turkey tops July’s Google searches
Turkey was the most searched for destination in July, according to Greenlight’s regular look at Google natural search results for the UK market.
Greenlight analysed 3,200 keywords in the holiday category for the June, July and August period. In total, these terms delivered 29m searches to UK users – around 9m in June, 11m in July and 9m in August.
In July specifically, generic terms accounted for 56% of the 11m searches, short-haul destinations for 27% and long-haul for 17%
“Turkey holidays” was the most popular destination specific term in July, accounting for 6% or 637,000 searches . Cyprus holidays accounted for 3%, Sharm el Sheikh, Ibiza and Crete each picking up 2%. Spain holidays only had 1%.
“Holidays” was the most popular term, accounting for one in four searches in July. “Cheap holidays” was used 11 % of the time.
Greenlight also ranks brands according to how often they appear on the first page of Google for the terms analysed. Overall, directline-holidays.co.uk is the most visible web site, appearing on the first page for 71% of the searches in July. It is followed by Thomson.co.uk (62%), holidayhypermarket.co.uk (55%), travelsupermarket.com (51%) and thomascook.com (51%).
Thomas Cook has improved its natural search visibility since the previous report in May, when it was ranked well outside the top ten with a visibility of only 14%. In July, Thomas Cook was ranked second with 71% visibility on generic terms; thomson.co.uk topped the short-haul and long-haul destination-specific lists with 82% and 69% respectively.
The white paper also considers paid search by looking at which brands appeared as a sponsored link for the top 90 keywords, taking various factors into account to ensure consistency. Firstchoice.co.uk is ranked number one, getting a 65% share of voice. It bid on 68 of the 90 terms and achieved an average ad position of 4. Teletext Holidays came second with 51%, although it targeted 82 of the terms and had an average position of fifth.
The copy used by brands for the sponsored links is also analysed, with travelsupermarket.com having the most consistent message. Greenlight however points out that the top 15 creatives all have a value for money proposition, using terms such as “bargain”, “cheap” and “deals”. Only Teletext Holidays offers a specific “prices from …” line in its copy.
By combining the rankings from the natural and paid search analysis, it ranks firstchoice.co.uk as the top travel brand, followed by directline-holidays.co.uk and Thomson.co.uk.
To download the report in full, click here
