Ouch! Airline Network ignores ad watchdog. Gets slammed.

Airline Network has received a firm wrap across the knuckles by the Advertising Standards Authority this morning after it ignored a request for information about an apparent mis-leading ad.

Lastminute.com made the complaint to the ASA after an email blast from Airline Network to promote long-haul fares.

The ASA asked Airline Network to explain. The Airline Network didn't respond. The ASA didn't like that one little bit.

The full - subsequently upheld - citation.

This last line in the citation should be of particular concern to Airline Network.

We asked CAP to inform its media members of the problem with Airline Network.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: airline network lastminute ASA advertising watchdog

The Joy of SEO

Search engine optimisation can be a fickle business at times. Indeed, travel companies up and down the land are known to agonise long into the night about where they appear on that Official Gateway to Instant Traffic, Google.

Digital marketing agencies are appointed; months are spent on designing Google-friendly landing pages; complicated keyword folksonomies are created – all in the hope that the consumer will chance upon seeing an entry in natural search listings for a company, product or destination.

And then some upstart comes along and shows them how it’s done, without any special investment.

Type “flight search engine” into Google and appearing in first place, as you might expect, is a high profile meta search engine – Skyscanner, in this case.

But what is this? In second place is that pesky Travel-Rants consumer blog.

In fact, the US version of Sidestep, IfYouSki, GooFlight and VisitBritain are the only pureplay "flight search engines" to appear on the first page.

So, well done to Mr Cronian of Travel-Rants – a developer by day with a passion for travel, writing his blog purely as a hobby.

The message here is simple: good content – or content deemed important by others on the web – can be as valuable as any investment in a digital marketing strategy.

NB: If anyone doubts whether “flight search engine” is a phrase in demand (it not being destination specific, for example), just check out the number of companies bidding against it in Google’s pay-per-click listings.

TravelSupermarket, Travelzoo, Opodo, Ebookers, Airline-Network, Kayak, SkyScanner (again), DialAFlight, Expedia and Travelocity obviously consider it worth paying money for every click.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: search engine SEO pay-per-click natural search

Who gets their traffic from PPC?

Heather Hopkins from Hitwise has turned up some interesting data revealing how much traffic the top ten travel websites bring in from sponsored links in search engines.

The diagram below – from the week ending 21 October – indicates how much traffic the ten receive from search engines (horizontal) against how many of those same visits come in via pay-per-click ads.
The first site to stand out is price comparison offering Cheapflights, which brings in around 55% of its overall traffic via search engines, but only around a third is from PPC click-thrus.

The nearest any of the remaining nine sites gets to Cheapflights with its share of traffic from search engines is Airline Network, at around 45%.

Contrast Cheapflights with online travel agency Ebookers, which has admitted to serious problems with its search engine optimisation in recent months and is only bringing in around 30% of its overall traffic from Google, Yahoo! et al.

Ebookers’ share from PPC is around two-thirds of its overall search engine traffic.

Hopkins says: “The lesson for marketers is that there is no hard and fast rule for the right mix of paid and organic traffic. Instead, marketers should examine return on investment from specific campaigns whilst constantly testing and adjusting search campaigns.

[Read the full analysis here]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution