In USA, 30.4% of the visits registered last July by airlines, hotels and, above all, travel agency webistes, stemmed from Google searches, representing an increase of 6% with respect to the same month in 2009. Yahoo (4.4%) and Bing (3.5%) are still way behind Google, according to a recent report released by Hitwise.
According to the report, based on data supplied by 10 million Internet users in USA, Bing – the search engine launched by Microsoft – registered the largest increase in traffic (69%),and now threatens to overtake Yahoo shortly.
Generally speaking, in July Google had a 71.4% market share of all searches in USA, followed by Yahoo (14.4%), Bing (9.9%), and Ask (2.3%).
As regards the type of searches carried out on Google, only health-related searches (30.9%) outstripped travel-related ones (30.4%); although this trend could change shortly, since the latter are up 6% and the former down 4%. Car-related searches (23%) occupies third place.
Google makes a concerted bid to penetrate travel industry
These excellent figures are behind Google’s concerted bid to penetrate the travel market. Along these lines, it is important to remember the acquisition made by the search engine giant at the beginning of July, paying 700 million dollars for ITA Software, with the aim of offering a tool allowing users to comparison shop for flights.
