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Where Do Searches Lead? Entertainment, Summer, Fun

Airplane-AAMickey Mouse, palm trees and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Americans will head for those destinations this summer, so search engine marketing might want to start thinking about serving up paid-search ads that tie into entertainment, sun and fun.  

In an analysis of nearly 1,000 travel-related keywords searched an estimated 2.4 billion times on Google during January and February 2012, AdGooroo found Disney accounted for 7.3% of all travel-related searches followed by Las Vegas at 6.3%, Florida at 5.7%, Caribbean  at 3.2%, Mexico at 2.1%, and Hawaii at 1.1%.

The study used AdGooroo's Industry Insight search marketing dashboard to measure search data for more than 160 industries, but it also measures and compares accounts from brand advertisers.

The overall most popular travel topic searched was not destinations, but rather airlines, trains, auto rentals totaling 33.6% of all searches, and lodging and hotels at 21.3%, suggesting that Americans may already have a good idea where they plan to go, how to get there, and where they will stay.

The next-most-popular travel topics were destinations at 17.7%, ticketed attractions at 10.8%, cruises at 9.1%, booking sites at 3.6%, and travel packages at 3.1%.

Among all travel topics, keywords focused on travel packages recorded the highest click-through rate, at 9.8%. Keyword searches related to booking sites, such as Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity generated the lowest click-through rate at 2.7%. These low numbers might reflect a trend by consumers to rely on search engines such as Google and Bing to find travel flights, times and rates.

The study also found that most consumers continue to look for deals, with 13.3% of total travel-related searches containing keywords like coupon, discount, cheap, low price and deal.

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