IAB Engage for Travel conference

[Read down for updates]

Live blogging some bits and bobs this morning.

Just finished a speech at the Internet Advertising Bureau's Engage for Travel conference, titled "Challenge for Advertisers with Travel 2.0".

Plenty of nods in the audience when talking about ad budgets and engaging so-called Web 2.0 sites such as blogs and social networks. One of the people I spoke to when writing the speech said there is a real sense that experimental advertising is being reigned in, favouring the measurable - i.e. search and affiliate advertising - marketing campaigns.

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Lewis Lenssen of Netizen Digital: measure the effectiveness of offline brand campaigns with a strong pay-per-click advertising push.

Price and product are still king. If the product is poor you'll get found out still.

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Russell Gould, Thomas Cook:

The TCG ecommerce four-point plan - 1) customer acquisition 2) customer retention and growth 3) customer conversion 4) measurement and optimisation. Simple?

Engagement hugely important: maintaining contact constantly (and usefully) with the customer, primarily through email marketing.

Gould is "stunned" by the impact of video on conversion rates on thomascook.com. User who looks at video converts at 30% higher than those who don't.

40% of people that clicked on the recently Thomas Cook interactive magazine then went to the website, via the Book Now buttons.

Gould invites delegates to try the new Beta thomascook.com.

User reviews coming. Not Tripadvisor. Will use negative and positive reviews, will moderate against profanity, etc.

Best bit of the speech: personalised video demonstration.

Videos created live, simply by pulling together clips from the preferences put forward by the user. Very impressive.

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Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Every face tells a story

Thankfully the headline is not a reference to the, er, classic Cliff Richard single from 1997, but describes quite nicely the results of the Oban Multilingual 'Face of Global Search' survey.

Following the release today of the survey looking at online travel search habits, Greig Holbrook, director of Oban Multilingual, has also penned some analysis of the results:

What the results clearly show is that travel search is a very culturally diverse activity and that search plays a huge part in both the research and purchase of holidays for global travellers.

The growth in Chinese on the web has been phenomenal and reflects the fact that over 900 million people on the web don't speak English (around 70%).

Ninety-nine percent of those people who took part in the research indicated that they have booked travel online at some point. This once again reflects the fact that globally, people are becoming increasingly familiar with booking their travel online.

This means that suppliers not only need to cater from them in their own language but also, as much as possible, allow them to buy successfully from the site. This means the sites need to be very well localised to reflect all search and online purchase behaviours.

Chinese travel searchers don't seem to want to use Google, often preferring their own engines like Baidu much more. With the huge increase in Chinese searchers actually buying online in 2006-2007, it makes more sense than ever to make sure that optimisation for China is focused on local search engines.

It is not surprising that travellers going to different place are looking for different web features. International travel searchers are becoming more specific in their online behaviours so that in addition to multilingual web optimisation, global social media optimisation also needs to take place. In this context, a site properly optimised social media that is visible to a variety of cultures will prosper.

The finding that those who look for multilingual websites tend to avoid Google reflects the fact that international searchers are increasingly demanding good quality multilingual sites which are visible in their own search engines and not simply on Google, as Google is very often not the preferred engine or method for sourcing travel bookings.

In terms of Spanish people travelling to the UK, we have already found that travel sites often fail to provide good optimisation in Spanish for visitors who are seeking to visit the UK.

Spanish people may use some English phrases to search or they may use Spanish, but very few travel sites provide them with the experience they need so they are often forced to use English sites.

There is a great opportunity for travel companies to tap into the demand for travel from Spanish searchers; both for holidays within Spain and for travelling elsewhere like the UK.

Greig Holbrook, director, Oban Multilingual

Cuil will have to get a lot cooler (and relevant) to beat Google

Silicon Valley loves a new product, especially when it reckons itself to be a Google challenger.

So there has already been plenty of hype about the new Cuil search engine, which has a fantastic pedigree amongst its founding exec team and - the launch clincher - an index of around 120 billion pages, around three times as many as Google, according to a FT report earlier today [link not available].

The engine has some good features and is displayed in an uncoventionial way (assuming Google is the status quo here for second).

For example, the keyword 'london' throws up the usual and relevant results and has a handy extra toolbar on the top-right hand corner which allows users to break down the results quickly into different categories types such as attractions, economy etc.

[Just forget for a moment that Ken Livingstone - pictured in the search results - is not in office anymore]



But we thought we'd also run a quick test, the ubiqutous search query 'flight new york london' to check what kind of results are coming in.

Alas, relevancy disappears entirely.


Type in "new york london flight", however, and you'll get 50 results.

We'll go back to playing around and report back.

Please feedback via the comments section any early impressions of Cuil.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: cuil search engine tom costello Anna Patterson

++Good news day for Ebookers - MSN ahoy++

More details here, but ebookers - with its parent company Orbitz - has secured a deal to provide full online travel agency functionality on the MSN Travel channels in the UK and US respectively.

A few things spring to mind:

• Best piece of partnership news for ebookers in a long time.
• The new Orbitz-wide technology platform is clearly working from a business opportunity perspective.
• Global deals can be done.
• Blood is clearly NOT thicker than water - why Orbitz over Expedia [the OTA it created in 1996], which previously ran the search and bookings tools on MSN.
  

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Purple Pod #5 - Gapyear, Microsoft, Sky's The Limit, no Facebook!

The latest Purple Pod is now available.

Remember you can subscribe to the Purple Pod by adding this feed to your RSS reader or via iTunes [NB: link opens your iTunes application].

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Yahoo+Microsoft - travel sites in the UK probably won't care too much

Clearly the biggest story kicking about today concerns Microsoft's "audacious" (or so says the MediaGuardian, which loves the hyperbole of it all) bid for Yahoo!.

Microhoo or YaSoft? Both sound rubbish.

A letter to the Yahoo! board last night proposed a £22.4 billion takeover of the company.

The Silicon Valley blogs are going crazy with excitement. [Excellent coverage of a Microsoft conference call]

From a search point of view you can see why the Americans can hardly contain themselves.

Yahoo share coupled with Microsoft's is around 33% of the market (Comscore), against Google's 58%, meaning it would certainly have a decent challenger in the US if the two combined.

In the UK, however, it would be a different story. Google currently commands between a 75% and 80% share of the market, depending on which measurement you use.

Nevertheless it completely dominates the search market here.

From a travel perspective I would hazard a guess that a takeover would hardly send digital marketers skipping happily into balmy sunset.

Almost everyone we have talked to in the past year or so has spoken admirably of Panama (YSM's search platform) and Microsoft's AdCenter - "but without the volumes there is not much point".

Where this proposed takeover might make a difference is in the area of portals.

Yahoo has a sizeable travel portal (and there's always Kelkoo!). Microsoft has the Live network.

Search plays a part in the all this, but I wonder if the takeover is more of a way of reaching consumers with other services.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: yahoo microsoft google

Ten Ways to Handle Google If You Work in Travel

Google brings out bitter strong emotions in anyone connected with new media - and certainly most working in the travel industry.

So interesting to hear a discussion about the Search Engine Daddy and its hold on the industry at this week's TTI Open Space event in Windsor.

Led by Stella Travel’s Gordon Maynard, the debate was titled ‘What will Google do to the Travel Industry?’ - but it quickly morphed into 'What can the industry do about Google?'.

Here are some suggestions from the assembled brains, including Dermot McNally (Directski), Carlos Pereira (Ceejay Travel) and Bill Taylor (Advantage Travel Centres):

• Get together and propose how travel product search could develop. Try and work with them rather than working against them.
• Sit down with Google and have a sensible discussion with them and use collective power to influence them.
• Ensure Google remains an information medium, which of course they say they will, and not a selling medium.
• A blank boycott – take your money elsewhere and pursue better deals on other sites.
• Develop a more optimised service with other platforms.
• Concentrate on natural search.
• Measure the real returns you are getting and make sure there is no wastage.
• Build a competing travel search engine.
• Forget about Google and concentrate on your website because search engines are driving traffic to it that is often lost.
• And, finally, persuade Google to buy Expedia because its search engine is a lot better than anyone elses.

Why so much concern about Google?

Because the industry feels it must participate but there is a lack of control. Many also feel there is no real middle ground.

As Anite’s Ed Spiers put it: “There was a gap for more flexible travel and the need to get a structured view on an essentially unstructured market.”

Linda Fox, freelance journalist

Technorati tags: google expedia search

Open Thread - Travel sites offer poor user experience

The keynote speech yesterday to the ABTA Convention was - the boss of a leading UK bedbank told me after - "controversial, but something the industry needed to told".

This is the basic outline of my section of the address:

• Industry at a critical stage.
• Companies must adapt if they are to survive new digital marketplace.
  
• Demand remains high.
• Supply of products to consumers via web channels is poor and inefficient.
• Conversion rates are low.
• Travel websites are not matching the changes in consumer behaviour on the web.
• Massively empowered consumers trust each other more than travel websites.
• Difficult to create affinity with a "brand" on the web - consumers "recognise" websites.
• Only through huge improvements to user experience will consumers warm to brands.
• Travel industry is too focused on its legacy in the way it behaves and its culture.
• Companies must become "agile" in order to match structure of new market players.
• Consumers will become the new agents and brand advocates.

The speech was made to a wide cross-section of the industry, thus the generalisation.

Start the debate via the comments button.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: abta travolution

Pre-speech nerves

...are not apparent in this picture from yesterday's ABTA Convention in Tenerife.

Pictured with your correspondent are Jeremy Vine (BBC broadcaster and moderator of this year's ABTA Convention) and Mel Carson (my co-presenter and Microsoft AdCenter community manager).

The picture was taken during a rather tense 45 minutes when the power failed across the South East part of the island, including the bizarre Magma Arte & Congresos venue. [More official pictures of the venue]


All went well, apparently. A nearly full room. Open Thread discussion about our presentation to follow.

Riding the Wave Podcast by us, filmed immediately after the session.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Why travel companies need to be clever with Facebook

Seth Godin highlights how Hotmail doesn't make any money because users do not want to click on ads when they are checking their emails. Simple.

The same applies for Facebook.

Why would members want to visit the websites of advertisers on Facebook when all they are there to do is network with friends.

So in the midst of the Facebook frenzy, where many commentators have urged travel companies to embrace Facebook as a way of reaching highly engaged consumers, careful thought is needed.

Use groups, profiles, widgets - but avoid advertising on it.

Maybe...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook seth godin

Selling text links is bad for travel sites - official

A string of websites and blogs are up in arms over what are some rather fundamental changes to the Google algorithm, which in turn has hit website Page Ranks.

The crux of the issue is this: Google is understood to be punishing websites that sell text-based links to third parties by reducing their relevancy or authority mark, or Page Rank.

This in turn affects their position of keyword search results.

Full coverage of the issue on SearchEngineLand and SEOMoz.

A few emails into Travolution today asking about the impact, if any, on travel sites.

Well at first glance it looks like some blogs (the legendary John Chow, for one) and a number of media sites (including the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and Forbes) are nursing some pretty serious wounds to their Page Rank.

We have only learnt so far of two travel-related sites affected: World66.com (PR7 to PR4) and Beachhouse.com (also PR7 to PR4).

The chief operations officer of a leading SEO agency told us a number of travel sites could find themselves with a “bit of a situation” on their hands if Google continues its crackdown.

The problem, however, is that there is a huge “grey area” in what Google is doing.

If a website is selling a text link to a third party and the ad copy is relevant to the content, why - asks our correspondent - should the site be punished?

Indeed, a site which has a landing page about Paris may well be penalised simply because it has sold some text links on the same page to, say, a group of city break operators?

On the other hand, the opposite scenario is where some education sites (mainly US universities, which typically have a high authority ranking) have sold links to sites selling Viagra, simply because they know the ad can command a high price.

Either way, Google is cracking down. The short term answer is to probably to stop selling any text ads, if possible.

Another emailer asked: "So what about affiliates?"

We spoke to Commission Junction, part of the ValueClick empire, asking whether as a network it would purchase text links on behalf of clients.

The worry here, email to us by one SME tour operator, is that if Google reduces the page rank of sites containing links bought by affiliate networks, then the number of leads will fall, sales may fall, etc.

The network does not purchase text links, it said, and therefore those using its platform as affiliate merchants will not be affected directly. Of course the host site may well be flogging text ads to others and they will be hit by association.

One mildly amusing irony of all this is that, despite Google’s attempts to crack down on those selling text link ads, type “text link ads” into its search engine and the world’s biggest search engine is happily taking pay-per-click advertising from the likes of TextLinksAds.com, Onewaytextlinks.com and Textlinkbrokers.com. [We did not sell these links!!]

A quick call to Google this afternoon revealed nothing apart from a very carefully worded statement, emailed back a few hours later:

"Google is always working to improve the ways that we generate relevant search results and update our opinions of sites' reputations across the web.

"The Google Toolbar shows an indicator of PageRank, which is Google's opinion of the reputation of a webpage.

"Values in the Google Toolbar can fluctuate for a number of normal reasons, including changes in how we crawl or index the web, or changes in the link structure of the web itself.

"In addition, Google may update the visible PageRank indicator in the Google Toolbar to incorporate not only our view on the backlinks to a page or site, but also to incorporate our opinion of the forward links for a site."

This is clearly going to rumble on and on. Any comments from SEO agencies or other victims?

[ProBlogger has some good analysis and advice for bloggers]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: page rank SEO affiliate text link

We all love search

ComScore data released today reveals a massive 61 billion searches were carried out globally in August this year.

The survey is the first time (apparently) that a worldwide figure has been produced and illustrates the continued dominance of Google in the search market.

The top five search engines:

Google - 37.1 billion
Yahoo! - 8.5 billion
Baidu - 3.2 billion
Microsoft - 2.2 billion
NHN - 2 billion

Here in Europe we average around 85 searches a month, compared to 96 in Latin America, 77 in North America and 70 in the Middle East and Africa.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: comscore search

Travolution Summit presentations

...are now available.

As well as our news coverage and links to pictures, blog and videoblog.

All available on the Travolution website.

Presentations:

• John Bray - Looking for meaning: Future of search and web businesses (PhoCusWright)
• Mel Carson - 3D image of the world (MSN).
  
• Stephen Palmer - Social networking and search debate (Lonely Planet)
• Peter Ward - Social networking and search debate (WAYN.com)
• Glen Drury - Social networking and search debate (Yahoo!)
• Andrew Bradford - presentation to come (AOL)
• Graham Donoghue - We are not in control (TUI)
• Katherine Gershon - Delivering best experience online and in the air (SilverJet)
• Francois Abiven and Emilie Labidoire - Why virtual worlds matter to travel (Reperes)

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Click fraud on the rise...

Click Forensics, Inc. , a self-described independent analysis company, today released industry pay-per-click (PPC) fraud figures for the first quarter 2007.

The results are not good.

The Click Fraud Index , as it is aptly named, found that the overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.8% for Q1 2007 versus 13.7% for the same period a year ago.

The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 21.9%, versus 19.2% last year.

The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms (defined as those costing more than $2) was 22.2%, up from 20.9%.

“It appears that click fraud perpetrators are becoming more sophisticated even as search providers step up their efforts to fight click fraud,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “Click fraud seems to be following a similar path as other online fraud schemes such as spam and phishing - the problem is growing as fraudsters fine tune their methods.”

(It's always a few bad apples who have to ruin things for the rest of us.)

If you've not already read the most recent issue of Travolution cover-to-cover (and I know most of you good boys and girls have), check out "The Dark Side of Search" article, penned by our newest contributor, Adam Woods, for an in-depth discussion on this increasingly worrying topic.

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Technorati tags: fraud hijacking

Google suddenly has an awful lot of power

Google has snapped up DoubleClick, the ad and affiliate network, for a £1.6 billion.

Reports all over the web such as here and here suggest Microsoft and Yahoo! were also in the hunt for DoubleClick.

So the world's biggest search advertising provider has just teamed up with one of the world's biggest affiliate networks.

That is one hell of a squeeze on the online advertising market. Significant implications for the travel sector. I can think of at least one travel company that will now be putting almost 80% of its online marketing budget into Google's coffers.

Also puts Google's purchase of YouTube for £800 million (albeit with stock) into context.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: google doubleclick affiliate marketing

New Year’s resolution: Improving paid search campaigns - Part 2

Andrea van Eugen from AdPrecision continues her tips for New Year resolutions in PPC:

Part 1 here

Top tips:

• Concentrate on specific ads with price points, stock availability, deliver messages in.
• Don’t be afraid to use negative and specific matches on search terms.
• Try to move away from generic searches – they simply eat into the budget.
• Use a memorable domain name.
• Make sure landing pages are as relevant to the search query as you can with easy navigation links and a “bookmark me” option for customer retention.
• Track and compare results, maybe pause a campaign for a month and test a new one.
• Explore new search engines. 2007 promises to be a competitive year with all search engines wanting a share of campaign budgets.
• Optimise, optimise, optimise.

The search engines already look for ad relevancy to the search term and will ‘rank’ ads according to quality and landing page. It’s time to be more relevant.

Generic searches lack quality and will eat into any budget very quickly. So how is it possible to create enhanced search performance results? Simply by utilizing your existing data feed.

Convert all of your products, including misspellings into highly relevant ads – as if written by hand. All fields in your feed can easily be incorporated into keywords and produce seemingly limitless variations that will reduce your CPA and lower the average CPC.

Andrea van Eugen, account director at AdPrecision [email Andrea here]

New Year’s resolution: Improving paid search campaigns - Part 1

Andrea van Eugen from AdPrecision writes:

Whilst I was searching for a New Year’s holiday and also a specific television model (a gift), I noticed that paid-for search results simply need to become more relevant to the user requested search term/s.

The Internet user is becoming more web savvy year by year searching very specifically for desired products to purchase – the search engines act as a buyer’s classified ad library as more users move away from price comparison sites.

Each specific or long tail search request should produce results with accurate price points, specific models/ products available etc thus pre-qualifying every paid for click. I, however, was repeatedly served ads that were obviously concentrating on the generic search term e.g. ‘plasma TV’; no negative matches seem to be applied thus wasting impressions about 70% of the time.

The natural results can, on first glance, appear to be more relevant to a user search query. Mainly from price comparison sites I found the information to be out of date and sometimes limited. For 2007, I believe it’s time to give the web user what they want – a result that relates exactly to what they searched for.

Let’s take travel as an example. “Madrid holiday in March”. Why have generic PPC ads promising a “Holiday in Spain, Best prices available”, when you can easily create “Holiday in Madrid, Depart LGW frm £199 per person inc 4* accom”?

As the search is for the month of March, why not produce a landing page that lists March offers with further navigation links?

The specific ad - results in a better quality of the ad and also pre-qualifies the click by a significant degree for the marketer. The consumer already knows what is available and what price they should be expected to pay. As paid search costs on each and every click it seems sensible to make sure the ad is as relevant to the search query as it can be.

Part 2 tomorrow…

Andrea van Eugen, account director at AdPrecision [email Andrea here]

Review of the reviews on ProBlogger

Darren Rowse, the Melbourne-based editor of the excellent ProBlogger site, has asked readers to contribute their 2006 reviews and projections for 2007.

The Travolution Blog has submitted its Online Travel in 2006 post from yesterday.

Click here for the full list.

But here are some highlights:

• Predictions For 2007 from JasonKolb.com
• 2006 Web Wrap-Up from Luna Tech Inc
• The Five Biggest Movie Gambles of 2007 from Filmrot.com
• 2007 Prediction – Blogs Will Be Replaced from Josh Maher
• Blogs Aren’t The Story In 07 from Blogging for Business
• 5 Technology Discoveries That Changed My Business in 2006 from Bella Web Design
• The Google Maps API: Predictions for 2007 from Beginning Google Maps Applications
• Reviews And Predictions from On Influence and Automation
• The Biggest Blogging Mistake I Made in 2006 from Can I Make Big Money Online
• How Old Is Web 2.0? Look Back In Time from Sante J Achille
• Top Internet News Anagrams of 2006 from InnocentEnglish.com
• 2007 Travel Predictions and Trends from Budget Globetrotting
• What Google, Yahoo And Microsoft Will Buy in 2007 from Thinks
• Top 10 Crzy Tech Gifts from Crzyland
• 101 Blog Tips I Learned In 2006 from Daily Blog Tips
• Blogs Are Dead – Thanks, Digg from MacStansbury
• Will 2007 Mark The End of Digg? from Blogging For Money
• Top 8 YouTube Videos of 2006 from The Bivings Report [hilarious]
• Who Will Jump On The Blogging Bandwagon in 2007 from IT Toolbox
• 2006 Search Wrap-Up from Quartz Mountain
• 2006 Through The Eyes Of A Travel Blogger from Travel-Rants

Enjoy…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

260 searches every second in the UK

Busy day today, putting the final touches to our October edition of the magazine, so little to report or discuss.

Only that Nielsen Net//Ratings has issued its latest report on the performance of UK search engines.

It appears our obsession with search continues and an estimated 264 queries are carried out every second in the UK during August. This equates to 22.7 million per day, 950,000 per hour or 15,800 per minute.

Overall this is an increase of 30 million (4%) six months beforehand in February.

By far and away the majority of these are carried out on Google, which grabbed a 68% share of the all click-thrus in the market.

Tailing behind are Yahoo! (9.1%), Ask.com (7.8%), MSN/Windows Live (5.8%) and AOL (4.1%).

More information and charts here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

A bluffers guide to social media

Antony Mayfield from Spannerworks writes:

Are you clear on exactly what social media is? Social media, which includes blogs, wikis, MySpace and YouTube, is not just a new set of media outlets or channels: is it is a fundamental re-writing of the rules of how media works.

The rate of innovation and change in online media at the moment is incredible. Many people are likely to have heard stats like "one blog is created every second" and "100 million downloads are made from YouTube every day" without necessarily understanding what lies behind them, or what they mean for their brand.

If you work with a major brand, chances are that social media is already affecting your communications and even your business.

For instance: 88% of the top 100 brands have a Wikipedia entry (a community-edited encyclopaedia) in the first 20 results on Google (most people don't look further than the first twenty results); MySpace delivers more traffic to HMV.co.uk than the Microsoft search engine MSN (now rebranding as Live).

Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:

* Participation: social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between the concept of media and audience.

* Openness: most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, feedback, comments and sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content - password protected content is frowned on.

* Conversation: whereas traditional media is about "broadcast", content transmitted or distributed to an audience, social media is better seen as conversational, two-way.

* Community: social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively around common interests - be that a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.

* Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, via links and combining different kinds of media in one place.

Antony Mayfield, head of content and social media, Spannerworks

Spannerworks has produced a fantastic book - What is Social Media? - available free to download here. NB: Creative Commons Copyright on P32