July 8, 2009

Travel Search Sites Offer Competing Deals

There's been a flurry of updates in the travel search world and they all have to do with finding great deals. Whether you're a travel provider, advertiser, or just plain need great airfare tix to SES San Jose in August, here's what you need to know:

Mobissimo has added student and youth travel fares to their site. Students can now compare those special fares to normal fares. Hey, you never know when a low-priced carrier might even beat out a student fare on a "bigger" airline. So, definitely check that out.

DealBase.com is all about hotel deals and now offers a personalized newsletter. Get emails that pertain only to the destinations, hotel star ratings, and price range that you select.

Last but not least, Tripeedo.com is a new site entering the competitive travel search niche. Tripeedo is kind of the Dogpile.com of travel search. It searches the search sites, as well as the individual airline sites, hotel sites, etc. However, most of the search sites already offer price comparisons on competing sites. And most of the time, all of the sites have the same prices. What would have sold me on Tripeedo is if they didn't open the search results in different windows. That's, again, what all of the other sites do, but that just clutters up my browser and desktop.

Having said that, Tripeedo's interface is very nice and makes it one of the easiest travel search sites to use. If they ever get the results to load on one page instead of multiple tabs or windows, they might just become my default travel search engine.

Tripeedo has their work cut out for them. In a normal economy, you would see sites compete in this manner, but there's a certain urgency seen in these updates perhaps related to the current not-so-normal economy. It's not just about beating the competition these days, it's about suriviving.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 11, 2009

Travelocity Unveils New Design for Homepage

Travel search site Travelocity has redesigned and features a more minimalistic style. Don't worry. The gnome is still there.

The new design centers around four main tabs:

• Book My Trip
• More Great Deals
• Explore Destinations
• My Travelocity

A "Best Deals" box on the left side features the latest in travel deals.

"In researching the approach for the new homepage, travelers indicated to us that what they wanted from an online travel company is a greater emphasis on deals and relevant offers," said Victoria Treyger, chief marketing officer, Travelocity North America. "We also knew that we had to balance that sentiment with simplicity and providing inspiration. This design addresses each of those challenges in an easy-to-use format."

What do you think of the new design? Leave us a comment and let us know your first impressions.

Related Reading: Travel Search Site Travelocity Launches Toolbar 24 iPhone Applications That Accelerate Mobile Search

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Despite Economy, KAYAK Says People Still Want to Travel this Summer

Travel search site KAYAK says last year's summer Staycation trend may be waning, if their new survey results have anything to say about it. Over 41% of those surveyed said the recession will not affect their summer plans, which is double the number of last year's survey.

I guess that all depends on how survey participants answered the question. If they didn't have any plans or already had reduced plans because of last year, then their plans would not need changing. Other data suggests this could be so:

• 62% will stay with friends or relatives instead of booking a hotel
• 50% plan to take advantage of off-season pricing
• 42% are trading down for a less fancy hotel
• 34% will book a shorter holiday
• 32% are choosing a destination closer to home

"The cost of travel is much lower compared to last summer's weekly fuel increases, so people can more easily afford to travel," said Brian Harniman, KAYAK EVP of marketing and distribution. "We're seeing more people use our cost-saving tools, such as flexible search, airfare history and fare alerts. We've also launched new tools to help people take advantage of all the savings offers out there."

Related Reading: Kayak.com Releases Winter Vacation Survey Data Kayak.com Launches Display Ad Platform

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 18, 2009

Travel Search Site Travelocity Launches Toolbar

As we all know, the economy has been volatile, which usually bodes not-so-well for industries that are on the indulgent side. But Travelocity is aiming to keep vacations on the minds of consumers by releasing a toolbar.

It may seem like bad timing, but with a constant presence of travel deals and sales, it could end up being a good strategy.

Plus, Travelocity is hitting all the online hot spots in attempt to promote the new toolbar. Facebook, Twitter, their blog, search ads and display ads will all be part of the campaign.

The toolbar was built on Conduit. Last year, Travelocity launched an iPhone app, which enables mobile travel search on the go.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 27, 2009

TripAdvisor Joins the Travel Search Space

TripAdvisor has launched a search engine where people can compare fares from various airlines and booking agencies. The site which is known for its reviews of travel destinations will also include a feature others have yet to add - the inclusion of bag fees, food and other items such as headphones.

"Nobody else has been able to give consumers clarity about what's the true cost of travel," Bryan Saltzburg, general manager of new initiatives for TripAdvisor told the Boston Globe.

Posted by Frank Watson at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 22, 2008

Expedia Chooses Baynote Social Search to Improve Site Usability

Travel search site Expedia has announced the selection of Baynote to add Social Search to complement its search results. Baynote uses what other searchers find most helpful or most interesting to refine search results.

“Baynote's Social Search technology is a great fit for Expedia because the collective input from our millions of monthly visitors constantly improves the relevance of the search results,” said Tom Taylor, director of strategy for Expedia.

Expedia says users will now be able to search for specific types of trips or hospitality vendors instead of simply browsing the site. The goal is to provide a better experience for the user. Adds Taylor, “The Baynote solution is able to deliver the most relevant results based on what other Expedia customers have previously found most useful for similar queries.”

Earlier today, SEW expert Mark Jackson posted about the connection between Usability and SEO. Looks like social site search could be another way to incorporate usability while aiding your SEO campaign.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2008

SEW Experts: Travel Search 2.0 -- Know Your Audience

The online travel industry has the benefit of being one of the most mature verticals in the Web today. In today's Vertical Search Marketing column, "Travel Search 2.0 -- Know Your Audience," travel search expert Elisabeth Osmeloski explains that because of that, any new entrant has to seriously consider their value proposition and how they fit into the Travel 2.0 space, and remain laser-focused on their core differentiator.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 4, 2008

World's First Search Engine For Hostels Launches

TFTHostels.com is the world's first hostel search engine. It combines the directories of all major hostel booking websites into a single interface, saving visitors time and money. Visitors can:

* Search the largest directory of hostels in the world

* Compare rates, reviews and recommendations

* Check availability, specs and location

* Book the hostel of your choice by visiting the hostel booking website

TFTHostels.com is powered by Travelers for Travelers and currently in beta. The site says "The service is free, in speech as well as in beer. There are no additional fees, and we don't fancy any hostel or booking service more than any other."

We don't know exactly what free "in speech as well as in beer" means, but it sounds good to us.

So how are the rates? Well we found a hotel in the Dominican Republic for $27 per night. We also found this guest house in Cuba for $44 per night (22 euros).

Casa Novo Guest House "We rent 2s room in a very big 1900's house with air conditioning, TV, fan, External window, fridge, private bathroom, hot water the 24 hours in the center of Havana. All our staff speaks english.You can enjoy 2 balconies. We are at 400 meters from the sea (malecon), 10 minutes walking from old Havana, 15 min. walking from Vedado and 5 min. walking from chinese town."

Best of all, the head honcho, Marco Van de Kamp, recommends combining his service with Twitter, Summize, (Twitter search engine) and Google Blog Search to get the latest comments and reviews on hostels.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 25, 2008

World's First Search Engine for Meetings: Worktopia

The only thing worse than attending a corporate meeting is planning one. For those with the thankless job of planning corporate meetings, there's Worktopia.

How many times have you wanted to schedule a meeting at or near an airport while you cool your heels waiting for a connection? Perhaps you've experienced one of those rare flight delays that occur so infrequently in the airline industry? Or ,maybe you just prefer meeting your clients someplace else besides the airline club where all your competitors are lounging around?

While not Utopia (a world without meetings), the Worktopia search engine provides a real-time database of available meeting spaces by geographic location. There's even the ability to see room layout, order A/V equipment and order catering.

If you're a fast-growing search marketing agency (is there any other?) then Worktopia offers an alternative to "booking" one of the local Starbucks--and battling the new class of virtual office workers fighting for space in 'Buckies.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:01 PM | Permalink

March 14, 2008

The Inside Track on Priceline and Google

Priceline CMO Brett Kellner joined us this week at Google's New York headquarters (via conference call) to chat about travel trends in vertical search, the robust health of paid search (PPC) campaigns, and integrating online and offline advertising campaigns.

Last year I predicted 2008 would the year CMOs "get search."

Brett, who leads one of the world's most successful online pureplays, "got search" years ago. His leadership in vertical search is one of the reasons why so many of his peers have started to see the value of search-driven branding and direct marketing campaigns.

While many CMOs are only starting to ask their VP or director of marketing how search works, Priceline has already started testing Google audio ads and Google TV ads. The early results? All good.

Brett didn't try to sell us anything at Google. He didn't even mention the upcoming launch of Priceline's new vertical search innovation: Inside Track. So when HotelMarketing.com broke the news about Priceline's Inside Track "search agent" we thought Brett and William Shatner deserve a plug.

Priceline has launched Inside Track, a new tool that allows users to create a personalized airline ticket "scout." You can see the top 50 biggest savings routes for Priceline's Name Your Own Price.

The tool also provides analysis of best days to travel as well as notifications of increases in decreases in airline prices in a given city. This will allow users to act on price changes as they occur instead of being tied to submitted travel terms.

SEW Blogger Nathania Johnson visited Inside Track and found it not unlike a financial services Web site with stock tickers (with the exception of William Shatner greeting Nathania upon arrival).

Clicking on a city pulls up a list of destinations served by that city. Next to it are up and down arrows showing whether prices to that location are rising or falling and by how much. Very cool dashboard that shows price changes and trends by top city pair.

Here's Brett's official statement: "With Inside Track, priceline.com delivers the kind of comprehensive market-wide price trend functionality consumers have come to expect from Web 2.0 travel applications, plus the savings that are unique to priceline.com due to our elimination of booking fees on published fares and our Name Your Own Price airline ticketing service."

For the business traveler with flexibility, vertical travel search engines now provide ultimate transparency into the yield management systems of airlines.

We really do set our own prices. Online travel is a 24/7 real-time auction - and the forerunner of Google's paid search algorithm and Yahoo/Overture's innovative keyword auction.

The launch of Priceline's Inside Track comes on the heels of an announcement by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Charter, a vertical search engine that is targeted towards high-end corporate and last-minute airline customers.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 1:38 PM | Permalink

March 4, 2008

Virgin Charter Launches Vertical Search Engine

Sir Riichard Branson launched a new vertical search engine, Virgin Charter, that promises to revolutionize high-end corporate travel and last minute luxury travel.

Scott Duffy, Virgin Charter CEO, said his search engine combines three of the best ideas on the Internet: local search user and seller reviews (eBay); Priceline's auction; and the "simplicity of Expedia."

They're partnering exclusively, though, with Travelocity Business as online business travel agency. Virgin Charter's targeting the $30 billion market for private air travel with an online auction marketplace.

To put the private charter "size of market" in perspective, $30 billion is roughly the total size of the search market. That's one reason why vertical search promises exponential growth in coming years.

Last year JPMorgan Chase predicted search would reach more than $30 billion this year. Search totaled just over $26 billion in 2007. The JP Morgan Chase forecast estimated search could reach $60 billion by 2011.

On the Virgin Charter "Travel 2.0" site, you can submit a trip request (standard vertical search engine data: preferred trip dates, locations, special requests) to charter air operators. The Virgin Charter system sends your request to a network of safety-certified charter carriers.

As with LendingTree and financial services vertical search engines, you compare custom quotes and offers. Charter operators openly compete to win your business, offering detailed quotes based on your request.

Searchers can select based on price, operator, plane type, flyer reviews, and (J.D. Power) quality ratings. On some flights, smoking may be permitted. Some operators may allow pets to travel. No word on whether snakes are allowed on any planes.

Virgin Charter also offers "Hot Deals" - empty legs - inventory that the charter industry traditionally allows to perish. That's great news for the hotel industry. Virgin Charter may create a new class of passenger: the last minute luxury traveler.

An empty leg is the outbound or return flight of a trip that's been partially booked. Virgin Charter lets searchers bid on an empty leg flight. The charter operator would decide whether to accept the offer or counter. It's like Priceline with humans, a bazaar concept in which buyer and seller might haggle.

Virgin markets empty legs as "the greener way to go" since the plane must fly. Unless of course, it doesn't. Virgin cautions people that an empty leg flight may change or be cancelled since it's based on a trip for another passenger. If that customer changes his originating flight, you're out of luck. Empty legs should be used for last minute travel when your schedule's flexible.

The early adopters? More likely to be the low-end FHM Top 10 or Sci-Fi starlets like Victoria Pratt, Melissa George, Natasha Henstridge or Claudia Black.

Personal assistants to Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and even the Real Housewives of New York City wouldn't dare risk empty leg syndrome.

Pics after the jump.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:56 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2007

Comparing Kayak and SideStep Businesses, For The Last Time

With the recent announcement that Kayak will acquire SideStep, we wanted to examine the two travel search businesses and what they bring to the party. In this competitive vertical, it's good to have some visibility into their results.

At the SES-Travel show, held in Seattle last August, we heard from many travel search providers and learned about excellent conversion rates: 12-17% for air travel; 8-10% for car rentals; and 4-8% for hotels. Maybe that explains why there have been strong competitive entries!

Both Kayak and SideStep executives took pains to differentiate their offerings. Drew Patterson, who's VP of Marketing at Kayak, explained that Kayak was streamlined search, more like Google; SideStep was about social media and community, more like Yahoo. SideStep's priority was "to find the best deal or best reservation to meet your needs,” said Sam Shank, VP at SideStep.

It's easier to compare these search suppliers by analyzing their revenue contributions (per TechCrunch). Kayak said they supported $2.5 billion/year in ticket sales and earned $50 million revenues, which produced a 2% yield. SideStep supported $1.0 billion/year and earned $35 million revenues, or a 3.5% yield. However, this yield is inflated because SideStep revenues also included contributions from its TravelPost (user reviews) and TripUp (social networking) units.

Perhaps a more apples-to-apples comparison might be made from valuing unique visitors. In November, comScore reported about 5.25 million uniques from Kayak and 4.5 million uniques from SideStep. When we annualized these numbers, it translated to approximately $0.79 per Kayak unique and $0.65 per SideStep unique visitor.

In any event, there appears to be a lot of upside revenue potential from travel search volumes. In her SES-Travel keynote, Nancy Ramamurthi, Chief Marketing Officer for SideStep.com, claimed there would be over 100 million unique visitors in the next three to five years.

As long as the referrals model continues to work, Kayak is buying major market share and presumably efficiencies. It will be interesting to see how many metasearch engines continue to duke it out. Henry Harteveldt, a Forrester Research analyst, told the WSJ that the percentage of online leisure travelers using these engines has been holding steady, at 12% to 15% of travelers since 2006. Thus the upside isn't entirely clear at this stage.

More here: Travel Search: Up Close and Personal; Hug The Reservations; Tech Crunch's Breaking News; WSJ Coverage (Paid Access)

Posted by at 3:27 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2007

SEW Experts: Travel Search: Up Close and Personal

In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Travel Search: Up Close and Personal," SES Travel Edition organizer Elisabeth Osmeloski gives you an update on trends in the travel search industry.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2007

Hug the Reservations

If you listen to some of the Travel Search competitors, then you might come to this same conclusion too. The prime opportunities are "hugging" or driving demand for travel reservations. It's just passé to be deeply rooted in travel infrastructure, transactions and payment systems. Instead, there's more growth in travel advertising these days.

How do these search specialists approach the travel vertical? They gather comprehensive results, and often mix in a little social functionality and content for good measure. They also produce open and unconstrained results, unburdened by package offerings or other legacy services.

SideStep's priority is "to find the best deal or best reservation to meet your needs,” explains Sam Shank, VP/GM of TravelPost. That translates into expansion from search to itinerary planning, based on its TP acquisition last fall. “Getting people to contribute [reviews] is very, very hard,” says Shank, and apparently worth the effort.

Even the traditional travel agencies are grappling with new upstream offerings. Ashley Randall, Product Manager of TripAdvisor, took pains to distance her company from parent Expedia at last week's SES-Travel gathering. She was asked for advice regarding social networks and reflected on what makes her service strong – empowering her members and remembering what you're good at. My sense is that TA's all about additional traffic, too.

Perhaps the most interesting perspective came from Drew Patterson, who's VP of Marketing at Kayak. When I asked him to compare his company to SideStep, he provided a search metaphor: Kayak is streamlined search, more like Google; SideStep is about social media and community, more like Yahoo. At least their respective offerings are clearly differentiated here.

While it may be a very competitive marketplace, the players seem more genteel and respectful than I expected. They have different priorities, see a vast marketplace, and clearly understand there's no monopoly in travel search. While Kayak, SideStep, Mobissimo, Farecast and others compete directly through their travel search engines, their approaches seem pretty different – and there's some room for all of them.

So beyond the obvious consumer demand and cool search technology, what's motivating all these Travel Search entrants? It's all about the advertising, in an extremely attractive commercial environment. Check out these conversion stats, as ticked off by Patterson: 12-17% for air travel; 8-10% for car rentals; and 4-8% for hotels. So maybe hugging the reservations is more than a friendly gesture!

Posted by at 3:38 AM | Permalink

July 6, 2007

SEW Experts: Why Should I Book My Vacation Via Your Travel Site?

In today's Vertical Challenge column, "Why Should I Book My Vacation Via Your Travel Site?," Elisabeth Osmeloski tells owners and managers of travel sites how to convince every traveler that their service provides the most value. Do this well, and word of mouth marketing will kick in.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:34 AM | Permalink

March 22, 2007

SideStep and EveryClick Team Travel Searches, Charity Donations

SideStep.com just announced a partnership with EveryClick.com, a UK based search engine with social responsibility, giving 50% of gross revenues to charities.

Everyclick will incorporate SideStep's travel search technology, allowing their users to search for and compare travel deals worldwide, while 50% of the revenue generated from travel-related searches on everyclick.com will be donated to charity.

Kevin Eyres, Managing Director, SideStep Europe, said, "Not only is SideStep providing everyclick users with the ability to find the best travel deals on the web, but through enhancing the overall search experience, we hope that more people will research their trips through everyclick and raise funds for worthwhile charities.”

Polly Gowers, CEO and Founder of everyclick.com, said, "Providing our users with the best search experience possible while raising funds for charity is at the heart of everything we do. SideStep technology allows us to provide an outstanding, intelligent contextual travel search offering which should boost our site traffic and our fund raising.”

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 1:25 PM | Permalink

October 31, 2006

SideStep Buys TravelPost

SideStep acquired TravelPost for a combination of cash and stock. TravelPost will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SideStep.

According to the press release, "TravelPost.com has grown into a leading source for unbiased user-generated hotel reviews and ratings, travel news, information resources and travel blogs. The company has excelled at organizing travel information to improve the way people research and shop for travel."

TravelPost, with over 500,000 hotel reviews on its site, might be the smartest little travel site you've never heard of. The coolest feature is the ability to filter hotel reviews by Age, Gender, Budget, and Trip Purpose. TravelPost requires the reviewer to enter demographic information before posting.

As Sam Shank, CEO of TravelPost explained, I'd take trips off of my friends' advice or itineraries and have an amazing time because I'd stay at the right hotel or go to the right restaurant for me. [TravelPost] was a way to automate that word of mouth process."

TravelPost already is a close partner of SideStep, providing a subset of the hotel reviews found on the site. SideStep also works with PowerReviews and offers expert editorial content. SideStep has been an advertising partner of TravelPost for the last 6-8 months.

According to Sam "We have direct relationships with the Online Travel Agents (OTAs) and direct relationships with a majority of the major hotel brands like InterContinental, Hilton, and Marriott. We don't see any of that presentation changing on TravelPost in immediate future, but this acquisition lends itself to lots of experimentation."

Asked if there's a conflict with these advertisers since some of the major OTAs, Expedia and Travelocity, don't work with SideStep, Rob Solomon, CEO of SideStep responded "we're a media company – we want to work with the best advertisers in the space. We'll continue to work with the OTAs. Expedia and Travelocity don't participate in search on SideStep, but they spend money on SideStep in the form of deals and graphical media. While they [OTAs] say they don't want to commoditize their offerings, SideStep had 5 million uniques over the summer. [The OTAs] will wake up and realize have to participate. Travel search is a very real model and a legitimate part of the travel ecosystem. We're where NexTag, Shopzilla, and Shopping.com were 4 years ago."

It's interesting to note that Rob is the former GM of Yahoo! Shopping and Sam is a former employee of NexTag, so they both have plenty of experience with vertical search.

Sam and Rob both stressed the core of this deal is about user generated content. Sam explained "in travel, word of mouth and [recommendations from] friends are key. There's no better source of information than other people like you." Rob added "TravelPost really increases the corpus of information that's out there by allowing users to express their opinions. When you combine TravelPost with our scale, the consumer ends up winning."

Posted by Brian Smith at 9:55 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

OneSky Jets Travel Search Engine For Private Jet Flights

Can't afford your own private jet, like the 767 the Google cofounders own, but like the idea of flying privately? OneSky is a new search engine allowing you to book room on private jets between destinations within the United States. They tell me:

OneSky does not own or operate its own planes, but rather, it draws upon an exclusive network of 150 Gold-rated charter operators who have an inventory of over 1,500 jets which are carefully monitored for safety and security.

The CEO/Pres. Greg Johnson was formerly a logistics executive at FedEx, and the Chairman, Trey Urbahn, was former CEO of both Priceline and FareChase.

A flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles would run $5,000 to $27,000, in a quick check I did, so I don't think I'll be flying private any time soon :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:58 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

SideStep Launches Syndication Platform, Partners with Forbes.com

SideStep today launched its syndication platform, "a simple and easily customizable platform that provides a consistent user experience between SideStep.com and partners who want to incorporate SideStep's award winning travel search technology into their own sites."

While I'm still waiting for a strong API affiliate program from one of the travel search engines, this is a step in the right direction. Sure beats trying to compete with the OTAs (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz) on the pay per click (PPC) engines.

In conjunction with the new syndication platform, SideStep announced its first partner, Forbes.com, which launched the luxury travel site ForbesTraveler.com. Not a bad partner to start with. The terms of the deal (or any deal involving the syndication platform) aren't crystal clear, but with a white hot online advertising market, I'd assume that there's a nice revenue share for all advertising sold through a partner's site.

Read a bit more at VerticalSearch.net.

Posted by Brian Smith at 3:38 AM | Permalink

August 21, 2006

Farecast Adds Cities To Flight Fare Prediction Tool

GigaOM writes that Farecast, a travel search engine that uses statistical modeling to predict if the prices of tickets will increase or decrease over time, has added cities, to include 55 U.S. cities. Wired News takes the "matter of fact" approach to their coverage of Farecast, describing "turns out 13D paid only $300 for her flight, while 14E shelled out nearly $1,000 for his."

Whenever I travel, I always try to track flight costs either based on mental note or by writing it down. I may track fares for a two to four week period and base my buy or wait decision based on that data. But often, I forget to check on certain days or I start my ticket purchase cycle too late in the game. Farecast keeps track for you.

I just bought tickets to go to St. Louis, and now I see that my purchase decision was in fact correct. Farecast says buy. The AJAX like interface plots the prices over time, you can increase the charts to see a larger version of the fare increases and decreases over time. Finally, if you are flexible, you can plot multiple destinations from one origin, to see which flight is the best for your buck.

I know I will use this tool. I just hope they add some more cities.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:22 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Travelers Aid for Air Warriors

I spend a ton of time flying around the world, and I've learned a number of tricks and techniques to make air travel, if not exactly more glamorous, at least more bearable. In today's SearchDay article, Search Tools for Air Travellers, I take a look at some of my favorite web sites that provide useful help before and after hitting the online travel search engines.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:13 AM | Permalink

July 10, 2006

Kayak Launches $10m Ad Campaign - Includes TV

Kayak, the travel search engine, today launched a $10m advertising campaign with a HUGE offline component. The TV commercials are fun, creative, and potentially viral. It's no coincidence that the spots can also be found on Kayak.com and YouTube.

This is either a brilliant move by the company or a sign that Bubble 2.0 is here. You decide after checking out the commercials and then reading my interview with Kayak CMO Dean Harris and my thoughts on the campaign.

Kayak is also running a contest encouraging the creation of user generated ads in the same style as the official Kayak ads. "The 'winning creative director' will win a three-night trip to New York with a friend to see his/her ad produced in the studio. Then, Kayak.com will show your ad on TV!"

Posted by Brian Smith at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Trip Planner Released From Beta

Yahoo is taking is community-travel site Trip Planner out of beta. The site has reached a kind of content critical mass and Yahoo has added some cool features in this general release:

• Trip Journals (blogging; photos can be imported from Flickr)
• Map-Based Search (You can drag the map and zoom to areas within countries for more specific options)
• Yahoo! Search Integration
• There are also a travel recommendations engine based on travel search history, as well as clipping and tagging functionality

In addition to being a useful travel site, with rich user-generated content, in many ways it’s the most impressive expression to date of Yahoo!’s social media strategy. Yahoo! Answers has received a great deal of attention recently (there’s an Answers integration with Travel) but the new Trip Planner is more fully realized as a product.

You can read a more detailed post on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 8:01 AM | Permalink

June 27, 2006

New Players in Travel Search Threaten to Disrupt Status Quo

Travel search has improved enormously over the past several years, but serious travellers still find themselves checking multiple web sites to make sure they're getting the best deal. That may change with the launch of two new services that use historical and predictive data to not only find the best prices for specific flights, but also to suggest the best dates on which to purchase your tickets. Brian Smith has more about the new services in today's SearchDay article, New Players in Travel Search.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:06 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2006

SideStep Adds Travel Guides Beta, Names SVP of Engineering

The battle of features in travel search continues with SideStep launching Travel Guides Beta. Most of the content is licensed from Frommer's with additional information courtesy of hotel partners. This launch by SideStep comes just about a month after the company announced its activities search.

Consistent with other travel search sites, Travel Guides is a stand alone section not heavily promoted in flight or hotel search. I think it's smart that SideStep, Kayak, and Mobissimo have kept their travel search engines squeaky clean, but there are natural synergies in stronger integration. As a first step, it's good to see a big 'Find a Room' button for some hotels in the Travel Guides. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find similar booking options for any activities.

The content for Travel Guides is good...of course it is, it's Frommer's. However, there's room for improvement and SideStep definitely has to take advantage of more user friendly, Web 2.0 functionality to beef up the user experience. Here are some other quick notes:

-SideStep is a search engine, but there is no option in Travel Guides to search for Bouchon or Ghost Bar if you're headed to Vegas (for example). -The map functionality will soon be upgraded to Mapquest's new platform (the sooner the better). -There's no mashup between the map on a city page (here's New York City) and attractions or hotels as Farechase and Kayak provide. -Frommer's is great, but where's the user generated content? SideStep should allow users to add their own ratings and reviews. At the very least, a partnership with TravelPost is in order.

In related news, SideStep named John Robison as SVP of Engineering. John was most recently the VP and GM of Yahoo's Premium Services Infrastructure, "playing an integral role in the development and support of Yahoo!'s technology and business infrastructure."

Posted by Brian Smith at 7:11 PM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

Travel Search Used By Few But Will Grow & Kayak Gets Top Honors In Review

A new report finds few use travel search engines but that declares the area set to grow. Meanwhile, an recent review gives Kayak top honors when pitted against some competitors.

Via Marketing Pilgrim, a new report US Travel Consumer Survey 2006 from Jupiterresearch found that "only four percent of online travelers say a travel search engine impelled them to plan or purchase their most recent trip."

David Schatsky, president of Jupiter Kagan said:

 Travel meta search engines are now offering expanded products and several have relationships with major distribution partners such as Yahoo!, AOL and Amazon. With this, travel meta search engines are poised to grow.

I agree with David, that meta search engines are poised to grow, but of the deals mentioned above, I only think Farechase really benefits.

Kayak, which powers Pinpoint Travel shows up for many searches on AOL, but Travelocity still powers AOL's travel channel. SideStep signed a deal with Amazon, but Amazon's travel section is so hidden that I doubt it's driving much traffic. There's potential for both these relationships to develop into something more meaningful for all parties, but at this point, only the FareChase/Yahoo! integration has much bite.

In separate news, Review: Kayak Best Travel Search Engine from the Associated Press is a bold headline, covering Kayak getting top honors in a face-off against several meta search engines.

The writer puts the search engines through a number of hypothetical trips (unfortunately, only looking at flights, not hotels) and says:

Kayak.com most often had the best fare six times while Yahoo came up best or tied five times. Mobissimo was on top four times, and SideStep Inc. tied for first once.

The writer was also very impressed with the features/UI on Kayak.

For a different perspective, BusinessWeek Online's Sarah Lacey wrote a review of Kayak earlier this week with the title Kayak: A Step Behind SideStep. Everyone has an opinion.

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:54 PM | Permalink

May 11, 2006

Finding European Flights On The Move

Stuck in a European airport and looking for a cheap flight while on the move? Skyscanner has got a new tool for you -- a mobile-friendly version of its site, Skyscanner Mobile.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:52 AM | Permalink

May 2, 2006

Beyond Booking Flights & Hotel Rooms

Online travel search does a good job helping you with the major tasks of planning travel—booking flights, hotel rooms, rental cars and so forth. But what do you do once you arrive at your destination? Online travel search provider SideStep has launched a new "activity search" that helps you find things to do and places to see at travel destinations. SEW's vertical search correspondent Brian A. Smith has a rundown of the new service in today's SearchDay article, SideStep Launches Activity Search.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:52 AM | Permalink

April 27, 2006

SideStep Launches Activity Search

SideStep today launched Activity Search Beta which offers comprehensive, real time search for local entertainment in categories such as Museums, Sports, Outdoor & Adventure, Amusement & Theme Park, and Dining. The service also offers powerful filtering options such as duration (3 Hour tour or all day tour?), city (Visiting NYC? You might want to see Stamford, CT), and day (Rest the first couple days and then choose an Segway tour for the third day of your trip).

This service isn’t just for someone planning a vacation, but also for anyone who wants to book an activity in his or her local area. SideStep’s Activity Search would actually be a very strong stand alone offering, but has even more potential when integrated into flight and hotel searches.

Read my full introduction to SideStep Activity Search.

Posted by Brian Smith at 3:53 AM | Permalink

April 12, 2006

Yahoo's Farechase Adds Features

Yahoo has announced that its Farechase travel service is "generally available," with a number of new features including integration with Yahoo web search, a social search tool called Trip Planner that enables users to create, tag, share and print personalized trip itineraries, and the integration of Yahoo Maps with satellite imagery so you can check out whether that hotel actually has a beachfront location or not.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

February 10, 2006

FareCompare Adds Flight Costs to Google Maps

Every want to just go fly somewhere but didn't care where it was, as long as it wasn't too expensive? SYS-CON Media reports that FareCompare has integrated Google Maps to show you flight costs from your origin. For example, the closest major airport to my current location is Newark Airport, so if I do a search on EWR (Newark's airport code), it brings back Google Maps with flight cost information from my departing city (Newark in this case) to other cities in America.

Currently Cleveland is the cheapest place I can fly to, according to FareCompare, at $118. Now this is a smart way to use the Google Maps API and differentiate your site from the hundred other airfare search engines.

Before posting this story, I asked Gary Price if he wrote up anything like this before. And as you can imagine, Gary did. His post was named Getting the Airfare Buzz from Kayak.com which shows a similar use of Google Maps and airfares. Here is the same search on EWR but at Kayak.com Buzz.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 1:28 PM | Permalink

February 1, 2006

SideStep Powering Travel Search on Amazon.com

DMNews.com reports that travel engine Sidestep has opened a "travel store" on Amazon.com. The story also says that SideStep has entered the UK and Ireland travel marketplace. You can find the UK/Ireland interface via the "country selection" pull-down on the right side of the home page. More about the SideStep/Amazon travel store here. In mid-January, Danny posted that Rob Solomon was the new CEO of SideStep after coming from Yahoo where he was vice president and general manager of Yahoo Shopping.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:10 AM | Permalink

January 26, 2006

More IM Search: Search Air Fare Info, Flight Status and More with Kayakbot

More search via instant messenging to report on.

This time travel search aggregator Kayak is announcing the release of Kayakbot for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). This new feature offers flight search, rental car search and more. You can also get flight status info. Simply add "Kayakbot" to your buddy list or use this link, aim:addbuddy?screenname=kayakbot. More about Kayakbot here.

Kayakbot Syntax: fly - flight search - (fly bos 1/28 sfo 1/29 nearby) room - hotel search - (room san francisco, ca) car - car search - (car bos 1/28 1/29) status - status of a flight - (DL 1149) help - context-sensitive help menu - returns to this top-level menu quit - nice way to say goodbye

I searched for flights using Kayakbot from from IAD (Washington Dulles) to SFO (San Francisco Intl.) and had no problems. On the AIM screen I was given five flight options and a price. For more info on these flights, to see more flight options and to actually book a ticket, you'll need to click on a link at the bottom of the page that offers a direct link for that specific search to the Kayak web site.

Neat idea, good start, but it needs work, It would be great to see more flight options on the AIM screen along with options to limit to non-stop flights, direct flights, etc. without having to open a browser window. All of that said, if Kayakbot continues to be developed this is a service I could see myself using.

In the past couple of months I've also blogged about Kayak Buzz. This cool feature lets users see the lowest fares people have found for a specific location mapped with Google Maps. Yes, an air fare mashup.

Finally, Kayak now offers an email alert service (Yahoo "Best Fares" Alert and Travelocity also provide this feature) that lets you know when an air fare price reaches a certain price threshold for a city pair that you determine. Mail can be sent daily or weekly. Here's a screen cap of a sample report.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:10 PM | Permalink

January 17, 2006

Yahoo Loses Another VP, This Time To SideStep

Ouch. Last week, Yahoo saw the vice president in charge of its developer network split to start-up Automattic. Now there's news that another Yahoo vice president has departed. This time it's Rob Solomon, who was vice president and general manager of Yahoo Shopping. He's heading over to travel search engine SideStep, to become the new president and CEO. You'll find a relatively recent interview with Rob from his Yahoo days here at ComparisonEngines.com. The release isn't up yet at SiteStep's press release area yet, so here's what we were sent:

Yahoo! Executive Appointed CEO of SideStep Rob Solomon to Run Travel Search Leader

SANTA CLARA, Calif. January 16, 2006 SideStep, the traveler's search engine, announced that Rob Solomon has been chosen as the company's new president and chief executive officer. Solomon has also been named to SideStep's board of directors. He was formerly vice president and general manager of the Yahoo! Shopping Group (YHOO), where he was instrumental in building one of the largest commerce destinations on the Internet.

Solomon's vertical search expertise is considerable, having significantly grown one of the Web's premiere vertical search sites Yahoo! Shopping. Additionally, he brings extensive experience in the travel industry to SideStep, having run Yahoo!'s travel business. Solomon was with Yahoo! for six years.

"Rob Solomon has the track record and ingenuity to strengthen SideStep's position as the leader in travel search and ultimately continue to transform the online travel market," said Jim Barnett, SideStep's chairman of the board. "A veteran of portal and search wars, Rob has seen and touched all aspects of Yahoo!'s business from startup to hyper-growth. He possesses the knowledge and leadership to take SideStep to the next level and capitalize on a search engine on the verge of mass expansion."

SideStep leads the travel search category, one of the hottest sectors of the $63.5 billion online travel industry (PhoCusWright). SideStep.com searches hundreds of travel brands to find flight, hotel, rental car and vacation bargains around the globe. In addition, it generates approximately $1 billion in gross bookings annually for its partners.

"SideStep is an innovative company with a strong heritage a six year history that began with creating the vertical search market," said Solomon. "I believe in its mission to revolutionize the online travel search sector and look forward to leading the executive team to continue to define and extend a leadership role within the category."

Solomon brings a blend of consumer, commerce, travel and Internet search experience to SideStep. Having served as a Yahoo! corporate officer, Solomon has proven strategy, product and leadership skills. He was instrumental in driving major accolades for Yahoo! including, Shopping Search Engine of the Year (Search Engine Watch) and top ratings in key Comparison Shopping Reports (Consumer Reports and Forbes). He brings relevant experience from top companies such as consumer technology leader Electronic Arts and travel services powerhouse Cendant Corp. A UC Berkeley graduate, Solomon begins his new post on January 23, 2006.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

January 5, 2006

bblocal and Other City Guides, Travel Resource, & Local Info Tools for Mobile Users

I just learned about a new mobile service with info about various cities and maps bbLocal for Blackberry devices. Since I'm a Treo 650 guy, I'm unable to check it out. bbLocal uses Google Maps and currently has info for 30 U.S. and Canadian cities.

Phea Duch from bbLocal tells me that they have plans to have info for all U.S. cities with a professional sports franchise available by the end of the month.

Duch added that listings for businesses will be free, but we do offer other services like creating websites that are compatible with the Blackberry browsers. The company also hopes to partner with other services. For example, the ability to reserve a table at a local restaurant directly from bblocal. Services like this already exist on the web. OpenTable.com is one example that is now available in the U.S. and launched in the UK mid-2005. However, I was unable to spot a mobile version of their web site. OpenTable also has thoughts about adding a mobile version.

Since we're talking about info that might be useful to travellers, many other online and offline tools come to mind. Allow me to mention three. More later.

+ First, the fee-based Vindigo City Guides for (Palm and Pocket PC/Windows Mobile). U.S. data only. Vindigo also offers a bunch of other programs for mobile devices and phones including real-time traffic info (mapped) and a mobile edition of MapQuest.

+ Second, the well-known Metro: The ultimate public transport guide for your PDA or Smartphone. This is a free service that's available in many languages and for more than 300 cities. You'll find maps and routing info. A web-based version of Metro, i-Metro, is also available. Btw, many sites including iPodSubwayMaps.com offer subway maps formatted for iPods.

+ Third, and as I mentioned yesterday, a wireless version of the popular SeatGuru site is now available. This site, either on the web or via a mobile browser is a must for frequent flyers who don't want to get seated in a middle seat at the back of the airplane.

More mobile travel tools soon.

Postscript: Of course Google Local has a new mobile client version (for some phones) and Yahoo's mobile platform also has local listings. The same is true at 4INFO and Synfonic.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:05 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Consumer Reports Looks at Travel Search Meta Engines in New Study

Consumer Reports/Consumer Web Watch has published a new study that looks at how 11 travel search meta engines and aggregators like Kayak, Mobissimo, and Yahoo FareChase perform. The full text of the 29 page report (PDF) is available here at no charge. A brief news release is also available.

From the news release: Consumer Reports WebWatch found reasons to be concerned about this newest segment of the largest setor of online commerce: no TSE can capture all or even most of the available fares and rates; certain itineraries may not be filtered properly; and questions remain about how leading TSEs are compensated and whether or not this affects the unbiased listings of travel products.

Here's a list of the 12 sites analyzed in the report:

• AOL Pinpoint Travel;
• BookingBuddy
• Cheapflights
• ITA Software
• Kayak
• Mobissimo
• Pricegrabber
• QIXO
• SideStep
• Travelzoo
• Yahoo FareChase.

The report also contains a bunch of travel search stats that might be of use to some of you along with a chart that looks at what key features each of these tools offer.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:42 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2005

Specialty Databases (Verticals) The Focus Of A Wall Street Journal Article

A few weekends ago Wall Street Journal reporter, Kevin Delaney, gave me a call asking for a few ideas, thoughts, and suggestions about useful specialized databases (aka verticals) that would be of interest to WSJ readers.

Today, the article was published and it's titled, "Beyond Google." You'll find it linked here. However, at least for the moment, Kevin's story is only available to WSJ subscribers.

A couple of quick comments and notes:

1) Thanks Kevin for asking for my suggestions and for the quote. You should know that for each database suggested and included in the final article, 40-50 more could have been included and received a well-deserved mention. I had to limit my picks for obvious reasons. Of course, Kevin spoke to others and also included their suggestions.

2) The "Beyond Google" headline is great. The word Google has a way of drawing peoples attention and the title of the headline is often the title of presentations I give. Why? A presentation titled, "Learn about Specialty Databases" does not pack in the crowds. Tossing the word Google into the title, does.

Specialty tools do not replace general purpose large web engines like Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Gigablast, Exalead, and others. A web researcher should have a good working knowledge of both general databases and specialty tools. Plus, in terms of some of my presentations, the word "Google" gets the crowd in the door and then I have time to not only talk about Google (many don't have any idea of what it can offer) but also have time to talk about the great useful stuff being developed by AJ, Yahoo, and elsewhere. So in reality it's a two pronged presensation. As I posted on Friday, it's clear that many people who use these and other tools have little to no idea of how these services work and what they offer.

+ General web engines (The full landscape, how to take full advantage of some of their services, creating better queries). These days it can also include time letting the audience know about verticals that these companies also provide like Yahoo Audio Search.

+ Specialized databases (verticals) the power and often time saving capabilities they offer. The challenge for many is just knowing about them.

3) If you read the blog on a regular basis, you'll likely notice that Kevin used several suggestions that I've written about on our site. Cool!

4) I was especially pleased to see the WSJ article mention the wonderful RegLightGreen bibliographic database and NetLibrary, available for free from many libraries that offers the full text of thousands of books. Remember, as I wrote in this guest column for BetaNews, public, university, and many other types of libraries offer FREE, 24x7x365, access from any web computer (no need to go to the library) to a full range of specialized databases that often offer content not found in web engines (full text journals, newspapers, magazines, reference books, etc.) OR packaged in such a way to add extra value to the data. Plus, these databases tend to offer search capabilities not found from general web engines. Every library offers different service and databases. The easiest to learn what your library offers is to either look at their web site or make a quick call.

Postscript: I'm happy to report that at least for the moment, it's the most popular story on the WSJ site today. Yes, I think the public is beginning to understand the value of specialized tools.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:27 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

Mobissimo Launches One-Box Air Fare Search

Now doubt that travel search is one of the hottest vertical search markets out there. Today, Mobissimo, a travel meta search site that brings together results from many travel databases and sites (137 to be precise), has released a new feature (it was officially announced today) that allows the searcher to enter a query in a natural language format in what Mobissimo calls a One-Box search.

In other words, no more filling out from/to boxes, entering dates, etc. Just type in a query like Chicago O'Hare to Honolulu, February 1-15 (sounds nice, doesn't it) and away you go. If further info is needed you'll be prompted to clarify the info. Btw, One-Box search only works for air travel at this point. It's a neat idea and one that I wouldn't be surprised if we this concept elsewhere in the future. More about One Box Search in this Mobissimo blog posting. Btw, the "traditional methods" of searching Mobissimo are still available.

Postscript: The Mobissimo One-Box kind of reminds me of a feature that MSN Maps has offered for over a year. It's called "Paste an Address" and allows you to simply copy and paste a location into the search box and have it format automatically. No more filling out a form. It's available for 20 countries or cities.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:04 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Travel Searchers Still Hitting General Search Engines

Partnerships are key to online travel search survival from Reuters covers some stats and developments with travel search. Only 6.5 percent of travelers have used travel search engines, compared to 44 percent who use a travel agency, data from Forrester has found. About 27 percent turned to general purpose search engines like Google or Yahoo, rather than meta search sites -- though what's not said is some of them no doubt clicked on results that led them to more specialized travel search sites.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:09 AM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Travel Search Player SideStep and Amazon.com Announce Partnership

Over at Clickz, Pam Parker reports on a new partnership between Amazon.com and travel search aggregator, SideStep in the article: Amazon, SideStep Partner for Travel Search.

Parker reports that Sidestep will be a co-branded section of the Amazon Travel Store. The co-branded site will go live "early next year." At the moment, Amazon's Travel Store uses results from Hotwire.

It's not clear whether SideStep is paying Amazon for the exposure or whether the two have a revenue-sharing arrangement. Neither company would disclose financial details or the duration of the agreement.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:13 AM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

Flight 949, Where Are You?

It's easy to check on the status of major airline flights in the U.S. and Canada, either through Ask Jeeves, Google or Yahoo, or through more elaborate services that offer lots of additional information. Gary offers the 30,000 foot view of the best of these services in today's SearchDay article, Real-Time Flight Tracking.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:51 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Getting the Airfare Buzz from Kayak.com

Kayak Buzz from travel search engine/aggregator Kayak allows the searcher to see what are the "'best fares'" to the most searched destinations from any airport in the world based on the searches other Kayak users have conducted. Your results are mapped on a Google Map. I wonder if they'll try it with MSN or Yahoo Maps?

The service combines some of the most popular ideas and topics in the online/search world today (below in no specific order):

• Using the web to spot "buzz"  
• Google Maps  
• Mashups  
• Communities of Users  
• Vertical Search and travel search aggregators

Let's run a search. We'll search for the best 25 fares from Chicago-O'Hare Airport (ORD). You can enter a city or airport code. If you enter a city name, a drop down appear with choices of airports.

• Enter ORD  
• Click the "Get the Buzz Button"  
• A Google Map will appear with colored icons (depending on the fare) next to the cities for the best 25 fares  
• In the left column, you'll see a list of fare prices and cities. You can limit to a specific price range by moving the slider  
• Now, click on the city name on the list of map  
• I'll select Phoenix. A pop-up appears with the price someone paid, the travel dates, the source of the fare, and how many searches the price is based on.  
• Remember, if you search for the same fare you might not get it. Why? You might be traveling on different dates and airline fares are constantly changing.

Bottom Line: Fun and interesting technology that might even turn you on to a great airfare.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:10 AM | Permalink

October 28, 2005

Accessing Flight Info on the Web

Since we first blogged about Google offering direct links to online travel databases (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz) a few days ago if city pairs are placed in the web search box, others have picked up on yet another Google test.  The new service is primarily about accessing pricing info, timetables etc.  This is DIFFERENT than the flight info "shortcuts", "Smart Answers," etc., that most of the major web engines, the airlines themselves, and others have been offering for several years.

For example, if you enter an airline and flight number into Yahoo, Google, or Ask Jeeves info about where the flight is located and when it will be landing is provided. Most of this data applies to flights in the U.S./Canada aviation system. So, if it's a European flight heading to the U.S. or Canada it should be in there. Exceptions do exist and not every service provides access to every airline.

Here are a few examples:

• Ask Jeeves
• Google
• Yahoo

Other services, aside from the airline sites themselves, provide near real-time tracking info with data direct from FAA computers and other sources. Examples:

• RLM Systems/FlightView.com Info about the flight and a map of the location of the aircraft.
• FlyteCom/WebTrax
• Flight Explorer/ FastTrack
• fboweb.com Info about the flight, maps.

Need mobile flight tracking info?  Here are a few options

• 4info.net (Mobile Web, SMS)
• Synfonic (SMS)
• Rovenet Flight Checker (Mobile Web) Unlike other mobile web flight checkers, this service gives all sorts of data like altitude, air speed, direction etc. Just like what you would find from many web-based services.

Airport Delays and Status (U.S. Only)

• Fly FAA
• Mobile Access to Fly FAA

Postscript: Thanks to reader Neurophys, here's what it likely to become my favorite web based flight tracking tool, FlightAware. Impressive!!!

Posted by Gary Price at 2:34 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2005

Two from Yahoo: Plan a Trip With Yahoo and Print Flickr Images

Two news items from Sunnyvale (aka Yahoo HQ) this afternoon.

• The Yahoo Search Blog has news of the Yahoo Trip Travel Planner (beta). Now, if I could find some time to take a trip. Basically, in just a few clicks create a personalized travel guide ready for printing. It sure would be nice in future releases you could download your guide to your PDA or Smartphone. Like many thing Yahoo, it's very easy to share travel guides with friends and other Yahoo users. I'm looking forward to diving more deeply into this one soon.

• And for the Flickr users out there, it's now possible to order prints of your Flickr images online and then pick them up at your local Target store. More on the Flickr blog.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:18 PM | Permalink

October 25, 2005

Google's New "Travel" OneBox

Looks like John "The Search" Battelle has caught yet another Google onebox on web search results pages. This new (I haven't noticed it before) feature offers direct links to several travel databases (Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz) when you enter in city pairs. Say Seattle and Boston.

It also works for non-US destinations. However, if you want to go from Portland, Maine to Phoenix, this feature will not work for you. You get no option to change from Portland, Oregon to Maine. The default travel database is to Expedia which is owned by IAC/InterActive that also owns Ask.com. Interesting. I wonder when Ask will turn this idea into a Smart Search. Maybe they have it now but I can't seem to find it. Also, another revenue stream for Google. Travel services and Google have always seemed to make sense to me. Heck, maybe my April Fools day post about Google Jet will soon become a reality. (-: Of course, we know it's no joke that Google has purchased a 767. Finally, JB I'm right with you friend about the comments you open your post with.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:32 PM | Permalink

October 15, 2005

Travel Databases for Europe: Lots of Trains and Some Planes

A few friends who are considering doing some serious train travel throughout Europe (many countries, several stops, whole thing) and they asked me for a few resources including a source for train timetable info. My first choice was a cool "deep web" database that's free to use and covers just about all of Europe. While it's possible to also purchase tickets online, I'm focusing on the database for timetable info. Remember, timetables change often and it looks like this database will get a major update soon. The database itself comes from Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany's national railroad.

Again, the database covers train info for many countries and offers an English language interface as well as user interfaces in French and Italian.

OK, let's run a demo and get some timetable info.

Let's begin the journey in nykøbing, Denmark (near where Nick lives). We want to travel to Stuttgart, Germany to visit and talk search (of course) with Philipp.

Using the database is straightforward and simple. Enter your info (starting station, end station (the database will help you make the correct selection), dates, etc.). You can even toss in what cities you want to travel "via" and how long (hours/minutes) of a stopover you might want. It's also possible to select or deselect certain types of trains.

From that point forward just pick the train and learn about the services it offers. Need to see intermediate stops? No problem, just click the link at the bottom of the page. You can sort various results by departure, arrival, duration, number of changes, and fare.

Other features include the ability to create a personalized timetable for printing or mobile device and station arrival/departure info.

Have a great trip and enjoy this useful "deep web" database.

Forget the Train and Take the Plane Alternatives? Yes, I've got one (of many) just forget the train idea and fly! This post offers a few suggestions of places to metasearch low cost European carriers. WhichBudget.com might also be useful.

Postscrtipt: A writer has sent along a note mentioning that the DB database also contains bus information for many cities and countries. Cool!

Posted by Gary Price at 4:12 PM | Permalink

September 19, 2005

More Travel Search Resources

A sightseer's best sites: Answers to your travel questions on the Web from the San Jose Mercury News is a very nice collection of travel sites to help those heading out. Real-time flight trackers, flight conditions, airport info -- there's lots to check out. Meanwhile, further to the updating of our travel search engines page last week, NexTag Travel is a travel search comparison service and SkyScanner is a comparison tool aimed at European flights with an interested "month" view where you can see prices in bar chart format across an entire month, useful for those planning ahead and seeking best dates.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:00 PM | Permalink

September 15, 2005

Updated List Of Answer Search Engines & Travel Search Engines

I somehow grabbed some time from the ongoing search news to start on some site updates! Answer Searching & Answer Search Engines is now minty-fresh with resources that help you get answers, such as from reference works or fact databases. Going on a trip? Travel Search Engines is also now updated with all those new travel search engines that tap into more than just partner databases, along with some old favorites. More updates to come, as I can squeeze them in.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:02 PM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

Travel Search Engines Bump Hotels From Top Search Listings

A study out from SEM technology firm SEMphonic finds that travel sites like Expedia, Orbitz and Hotels.com push out actual hotel sites such as Marriott and Radisson from top results of "247 hotel-related keywords." Travel aggregators or travel search engines get 39 percent of the top 50 spots in paid listings, while hotels get 17 percent of the listings. Hotels do better in organic listings, getting 48 percent of the top 50 spots.

The firm hasn't released the study to any one but DMNews yet, so it's hard to poke at it more. You can read more in their article, Travel Sites Push Hotels Out of Searches.

Top of my head -- I tend not to like studies that dig deeper than the first page of results. What's happening in the top 10 spots? That's what matters. There's a side remark in the DMNews story noting that when you look at the top 10 organic listings, Marriott, Radisson and Starwood hotel sites do well there.

I guess the takeaway point is this. If you run a travel site, make sure you're doing everything possible to ensure that your official site is showing up well, if that's important to you. As someone sick of always running into your affiliates rather than the official site, I know it's important to me.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:30 AM | Permalink

August 25, 2005

Execs from SideStep and PriceRunner Interviewed

After taking a week to relax, Brian Smith at ComparisonEngines.com is back posting interviews with leaders from comparison shopping services. This week, Brian has posted interviews with Phil Carpenter, VP of Corporate Marketing, at SideStep (a travel comparison engine) and Martin Anderson from PriceRunner.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:11 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2005

Gigablast Releases Travel and Blog Search Verticals

I just noticed that Matt Wells over at Gigablast has released Gigablast Blogs and Gigablast Travel.

These new specialty engines (verticals, if you like) appear to allow the searcher to search topic-focused portions of the main Gigablast web database of more than two billion pages. I hope to spend some time checking these new resources out over the weekend. If you're not familiar with Matt Wells, here's a very interesting "conversation" about Gigablast and web search in general between Matt and Steve Kirsch that was published last year in ACM Queue.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:04 PM | Permalink

June 21, 2005

Bezurk: New Travel Engine for Asia Pacific Region Coming

Bezurk is a new travel search engine aimed at the Asia Pacific region to go into beta next month. Industry leaders collaborate to launch travel search engine for the Asia Pacific from eyefortravel.com reports that former execs from Expedia, Priceline.com, chinadotcom, Fairfax Digital, and Yahoo make up Bezurk's management.

Travel is one of the hottest areas in the vertical search area. In the past couple of years we've seen new and updated tools from many companies. Here are just a few of them:

• Mobissimo
• Kayak
• SideStep
• Yahoo Fare Chase
• Dohop
• Pinpoint Travel from AOL

Posted by Gary Price at 11:47 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2005

Kayak.com Travel Search Coming to About.com

Kayak.com, the travel metasearch/comparison engine, has announced a deal with About.com to become About's "premier booking partner" and will provide access to their service on the About.com About.com travel and cities and towns channels.

More about the new Kayak/About relationship in this EyeforTravel.com story. I've liked and used Kayak.com, since it launched in beta last year. In February, Kayak left beta and announced a paid listings service. Kayak.com technology also powers AOL's new PinpointTravel travel search site.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:03 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2005

Finding Your Way Around in London

Search Engine Strategies London gets underway tomorrow, and all of us attending the conference will also be spending time navigating this ancient, sprawling city in search of food, drink and merriment. To help the out-of-towners get around, I've pulled together an article for today's SearchDay called Navigating London, with links to some of the best maps and other sources of local information for ye Olde Town. There's also a link to a very cool restaurant finder that not only helps you find a place to eat—it also shows you a 360 degree panorama of the eatery's interior so you can decide whether you like the ambience before you go.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:58 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2005

Allcheckin Travel Search Engine Launched

A new travel search engine especially aimed at the UK market has been launched. Allcheckin is backed by former executives from BT Looksmart and ebookers. I took a quick look, and a wide range of airlines are represented, as well as consolidators such as Opodo and ebookers. I especially liked the little sliders in the Refine Your Search box on the left-hand side of the page, after doing a search. It makes it easy to slide up or down the price you want to pay, as well as departure and arrival times. Hotel and car searching is also offered. Sponsored listings on the site come via Yahoo.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:10 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2005

Discussions On Travel Search

Have Search, Will Travel from MediaPost has David Berkowitz looking at travel search, the topic of three separate panels at the recent TravelCom conference. Some nice Yahoo stats on 76 percent of travel purchases being preceded by search -- and it taking six searches before a purchase is made. Some debate among a panel of newer travel search engines on how much information is too much. And a hushed room as an Avis rep downplays the need for meta travel search much less the internet: "The brand would be better off if the Intenet didn't exist." But it does, of course -- so the brand better get smart to it. Other panelists pulling in traffic from search certainly seemed to be.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:18 AM | Permalink

May 13, 2005

New Travel Search Engines Grow But Still Dwarfed By Existing Players

New travel search engines are growing in popularity, but they've got a long way to go to rival the share established players have. Hitwise: Meta Travel Engines Show Gains from MediaPost covers how stats from Hitwise show new meta travel search engines like Kayak, Farechase and Mobissimo, along with Cheapflights, have a 3 percent share of visits for those going to "travel agency" sites. Expedia, Travelocity, Orbits, Yahoo Travel and CheapTickets have a 60 percent share.

General search results from Google and Yahoo were also shown to be sending the new players lots of traffic. To me, that's not a strength. Ultimately, if a search engine has its own travel search engine (Yahoo does; Google could), it makes more sense to route people into that service rather than making them search, then sending them off elsewhere to do a search again. A Hitwise press release on the data provides more stats, include top terms driving traffic to the travel sites.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:18 AM | Permalink

April 25, 2005

A New Travel Search Engine Takes Off

Yes, it's another travel search engine that offers a meta or federated search of disparate air fare databases to report on. The engine is called Dohop and comes from a company based in Reykjavik, Iceland. Dohop has been in beta for the past few months and offically left the hangar today. At the present time, Dohop allows you to find schedule and fares for more 300 European destinations. You'll be searching the databases of more than 30 European airlines including both legacy carriers (Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways) as well as low-cost carriers (Ryan Air, Easy Jet, and SkyEurope).

You'll also notice tabs on the home page to access hotel rates and car rental prices. However, these services aren't working. I was only able to find links to various hotel aggregator sites and car rental companies.

Other travel search tools focusing on European travel include OpenJet.com and AppleFares.com.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:00 PM | Permalink

April 11, 2005

Kayak Launches Self-Serve Ad Product; Priceline Releases Travel Search Tool

The only area that might be as hot as mobile search these days is travel search. How about a "mobile" travel search tool (that would also allow you to tag your results)? That would sure have some good mojo. (-:

When Danny blogged about Kayak.com coming out of beta in February he mentioned that the travel search engine would also launch a paid listings program. As of this morning Kayak's new self-serve advertising service is up and running. This Reuters story has more about the patent-pending technology that Kayak.com is using.

From Reuters: Paid-search advertisers could use the company's new self-service tool to concentrate their spending on dates when they have empty rooms in certain hotel properties, or to promote flights between certain cities on specific dates, said Steve Hafner, Kayak's co-founder and chief executive. The ads will be shown to consumers whose travel search queries meet the criteria defined by the advertiser -- potentially resulting in better-targeted ads for price-conscious travelers.

Also on the travel search docket today is news that Priceline.com is launching a travel search engine that will scour fares, hotel room rates, etc. from Priceline partners. This is in addition to Priceline's well-known Name Your Own Price feature. More in this Dow Jones story and this news release.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:25 PM | Permalink

April 6, 2005

Travellazer Crawls For Travel Content

Relatively new site Travelazer says it identifies sites as travel-related, then spiders them to provide searches that are focused to travel-related content. The spider identifies pages that seem to contain a variety of travel-related terms, to know if they should be included. Want to submit? Sorry, there's no option for that yet.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:11 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2005

Sabre Holdings Purchases IgoUgo Travel Info Community and Database

Dow Jones reports that a major player in travel, Sabre Holdings, has purchased the online travel community and searchable vertical database of travel reviews, IgoUgo, for an undisclosed sum in an effort to offer more travel info and also get involved with paid search.

Sabre is the owner of Travelocity and the Sabre Travel Network, the world's largest electronic travel reservation service (what many travel agents and airlines use).

Access to the IgoUGo database and community will soon be available on Travelocity.

According to the news release, Sabre will enhance the engine by developing its own vertical search technology.

"Developing a keyword search engine specifically for travel is a natural extension of Sabre's 30-plus years of experience in travel search technology," said Eric J. Speck, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Sabre Holdings. "We have leveraged the skills of a very talented group of mathematicians who have previously established an expertise in solving complex travel-related algorithms to create this new search engine. Sabre Holdings plans to enhance the capabilities of the keyword search engine and then combine it with the plethora of real-time information in the Sabre system to enhance offerings from the company's other businesses, including Travelocity and Sabre Travel Network... The enhanced IgoUgo site will enable Sabre to participate in the growth in paid search advertising."

The Dow Jones story adds: ... IgoUgo won't compete with Sabre online travel agent Travelocity, nor will it channel bookings to Travelocity, he said. Travelocity Chief Executive Michelle Peluso has declined to participate in the start-up search engines. She has said search engines tend to focus travel choices on price, commoditizing the industry at a time when airlines can least afford it. Further, she views search engines as competition, just like any other online travel agent.

More in the DJ story: Sabre Holdings Buys Travel Search Engine IgoUgo.com, and this news release. Additional info about Sabre Holdings in this Hoover's fact sheet.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:53 PM | Permalink

Searching For WiFi Hotspots

Heading off on that big trip and need to locate the nearest WiFi hot spot? WiFi Search Sites Offer Spring Freedom from Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide has a rundown on resources to try. Also bookmark Geektels, a directory to hotels offering high speed acccess. Chris Sherman did a review of the service back in 2002:  Searching for High Speed Hotels, and it still looks to be going.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:44 AM | Permalink

April 4, 2005

Yahoo's FareChase Releases Hotel Search Beta

A beta released by Yahoo's FareChase service today allows you to simultaneously search multiple sites for hotel rates in the same manner you're able to search for airplane ticket prices.

Yahoo FareChase allows you to search for hotels by city, airport, or street address. The beta currently does not support searches for non-U.S. or Canadian locations.

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Other travel search services also provide hotel search tools including: + Kayak.com + Mobissimo + SideStep.

The new Yahoo FareChase hotel search beta works with Firefox or IE.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:34 PM | Permalink

March 29, 2005

New Travel Search Engines Beat Old

Venerable Consumer Reports pits new travel search engines Kayak, Mobissimo and SideStep against the established brands of Orbits, Expedia and Travelocity and finds the new kids do better on finding lower prices: Travel search engines: New routes to deals. But looking for packages, direct flights, preferred airlines or other options? In those cases, the traditional players are found better to use.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:29 PM | Permalink

March 21, 2005

AOL's Newest Search Vertical: Pinpoint Travel

AOL has been on a tear over the past six months, significantly upgrading and enhancing AOL Search (including local and desktop flavors) and also staking out serious claims in vertical search spaces, with Pinpoint Shopping and Singingfish (multimedia).

Today the company has launched Pinpoint Travel, an ambitious travel meta search engine that aims to establish itself as a trusted intermediary for travel providers, agencies and consumers—not a small task.

In today's SearchDay article, AOL Launches Pinpoint Travel, I take a closer look at this new offering from AOL, describing features for both searchers and advertisers, and frankly, I'm impressed. As I wrote about the relaunch of AOL Search, AOL truly is playing in the big leagues now.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:22 AM | Permalink

March 9, 2005

FareChase Announces Enhancements

FareChase, the travel search site that Yahoo acquired in 2004 is announcing a few enhancements to the service. A post on the Yahoo Search Blog says that FareChase is now available for Firefox and Safari users and offers more search and refinement tools including the ability to sort results by price and departure times.

FareChase is one of a growing number of travel research tools that simultaneously search and aggregate results from disparate databases. Competitors include Mobissimo, Kayak, and SideStep. More about these services in the Charlotte Observer article: Search engines revved up for one-stop travel service.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:37 PM | Permalink

February 25, 2005

What Model For Travel Search?

Will travel search be more like pointing people at individual travel sites where they can book (the Kayak and Sidestep model) or serving as a virtual travel agent (the Expedia and Travelocity model). Both sides disagree. More in Reuters Summit - Travel search sparks Web business battle.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:23 PM | Permalink

February 9, 2005

Kayak Travel Site Leaves Beta, Launches Paid Listings

Kayak is a travel search site that went up in beta back in October, as Gary covered more here: New Travel Search: Take a Trip with Kayak. It officially left beta yesterday and announced (link to Word document press release) that it would do a cobranded travel search deal with USA Today. It already has a partnership to do the same for AOL. The company also launched a paid listings program for its results, as covered more in this ClickZ article: Kayak.com Launches Beta of Ad Bidding Engine. A self-serve system isn't up yet, but contact details on starting are here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:05 AM | Permalink

January 24, 2005

Testing Travel Search

The Organized Shopping Blog puts some travel search engines to the test in Travel Search Engine Shootout - Las Vegas Strip Hotels. Conclusion? The results seemed virtually interchangeable from long-established players such as Expedia. Among new players, SideStep was more comprehensive than Kayak and Mobissimo. Advice for searchers? Check the official web site of a hotel you are considering, then try SideStep, Expedia or Orbitz to quickly see if there are better prices. "Bottom line, no one site has the best price every time," says the test.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:12 AM | Permalink

January 5, 2005

SideStep Allows Travel Search On Site

Travel search engine SideStep now allows you to perform searches via its web site, rather than having to do that through browser integration. More from ClickZ: Travel Search Company SideStep Launches Site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2004

One-Stop Travel Search

2004 saw an increasing amount of attention given to travel search tools, particularly those that simultaneously search multiple databases. In fact, Yahoo acquired FareChase in July and launched a beta in September.

The article: Search engines revved up for one-stop travel service takes a look at some of the new travel search meta search engines including Kayak (they just announced a deal with AOL), Sidestep (download required), Mobissimo (just out of beta), and Quixo.

UPDATE: Pam Parker reports that Kayak is about to launch a ppc ad campaign to help bring traffic to their site. See: Kayak.com Readies New Year PPC Campaign. I've used Kayak for several months and particularly like its use of "sliders" to help modify and focus result sets.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:48 PM | Permalink

November 16, 2004

Mobissimo Officially Launches

A press release this morning alerting us to the news that travel search engine, Mobissimo has officially launched.

We've blogged about this travel metasearch tool (it simultaneously queries more than 80 travel sites) several times and also linked to this Business Week profile.

Late last week, Kayak.com, another metasearch travel engine (and one we like) announced a partnership with AOL.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:14 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2004

Search Marketing for the Travel Industry

Anyone doing a search for travel-related information can intuitively sense that competition for top rankings is intense. In addition to the major aggregators like Orbitz and Expedia, affiliates, wholesalers and travel product companies themselves all jostle for top positions in search results and paid listings.

How do you survive if you're doing search marketing in this turbulent environment? In today's SearchDay article, Search Engine Marketing For Travel-Related Sites, Shari Thurow covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference where panelists shared tactics and tips for holding your own when competing with travel industry heavyweights.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

Nestorov's Mobissimo

We've blogged about travel search sites and tools like Mobissimo, Kayak, Yahoo FareChase, and SideStep in the past. In the new Business Week article: This Travel Search Site Could Go Far, Ben Elgin provides an overivew of the company and its founder, Svetlozar Nestorov.

Nestorov was 21 when he enrolled at Stanford and immersed himself in the sciences of data-mining and information extraction. Although his peers included Brin and Page, who went on to launch Google, Nestorov credits retired Stanford professor Jeffrey Ullman with sparking his entrepreneurial interests...Nestorov's search-technology ambitions go beyond culling more information sources faster. Mobissimo hopes to aggregate enough travel-related search data to begin offering more advanced travel advice. For instance, if a visitor is seeking flights from Los Angeles to Hawaii for two adults and kids, Mobissimo could scan its reams of search data to seek out other nearby beach destinations popular with families.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 8, 2004

New Travel Search: Take a Trip with Kayak

Kayak, a new travel search meta site that I've mentioned several times on the SEW Blog, has just launched a beta version.

Kayak, simultaneously searches more than 60 site for air fares, hotels, and car rental pricing info.

Competitors in this section of the travel search space include Fare Chase (from Yahoo), Mobissimo, and SideStep.

One feature I like about Kayak is how simple narrowing a results set it. Several refinements can be made by simply by moving 'sliders' (change flight times, price range, etc.)

This is very similar to the Smart Sort technology that Yahoo makes available for several product categories. Here, you can use sliders to help select the best product based on what's more or less important to you.

Kayak offers both HTML and Flash search interfaces.

Former executives from Orbitz, Travelocity, and Intuit are all part of the Kayak management team.

Here's the Kayak beta release announcement.

Also, Pamela Parker takes a look at Kayak in the Clickz article: Travel Vets Launch Beta of 'Google for Travel'.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

Travel Search Continues to Heat Up

The travel search and booking sector continues to get attention most recently with the purchase of Orbitz to Cendant. InternetNews.com looks at the marketplace in the article: Chasing The Travel-Search Rainbow

Mobissimo, Kayak (a site I've been testing and really like), and the new FareChase offering from Yahoo (a beta was released a couple of weeks ago) are mentioned in the article.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

The Traveler and Search Engines

Search Leads Travelers to Destinations Source: Clickz Search engines play prominently in travel planning, particularly for affluent Internet users. A joint study by Thomas, Townsend & Kent (TTK) and BIGresearch surveyed 967 Americans with household annual incomes of at least $100,000. The study reveals search engine usage for travel planning outweighs other online and more traditional methods. Over three-quarters of respondents used search engines for travel planning, compared to 47 percent who relied on magazines, 42 percent who solicited referrals, and 35 percent who used travel agents. [snip] Despite its popularity among affluent online planners, search engine usage for travel is diminishing. Andrea M. Stokes, director, marketing and international research for the TIA, says their research "shows that search engines are still being used in overall travel planning — likely for many things such as destination information, hotel links, fare searches, restaurant searches, etc."

While we're on the subject of travel search another new entry will debut this Fall called Kayak. I've been trying the site out with an early beta release and so far I'm impressed. Why? Kayak offers a useful feature that I haven't seen on other travel sites. It allows you to modify you're search results (air fare, travel dates, departure times) on the fly (no pun intended) using "sliders" or "levers". This feature is very similar to what you'll find when using SmartSort from Yahoo Shopping.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

 

• Send us feedback
|
• Technical questions or bug reports?
|
• Newsletter problems?
|
• Receive news via SEW RSS feeds

• Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. 2009 All rights reserved.
| Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions |
• Privacy Policy
|
• Affiliates

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>

• Send us feedback
|
• Technical questions or bug reports?
|
• Newsletter problems?
|
• Receive news via SEW RSS feeds

• Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC. 2009 All rights reserved.
| Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints & Permissions |
• Privacy Policy |
• Affiliates