Sponsored search links accounted for more visits in April to major online travel agencies than did organic search results, according to a new study by comScore Media Metrix's qSearch unit. The study
examined search campaigns conducted in April by Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and CheapTickets. The online agencies purchased nearly 240 million paid search impressions on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.
The marketers' click-through rates averaged 4.7 percent, ranging from a low of 4 percent (CheapTickets) to a high of 6.5 percent (Travelocity). Overall, 66.1 percent of the visits to the four online
travel agencies that originated at search engines came from paid links, according to comScore.
