Online travel trends: Mobile accounts for 17% of searches for flights

Jun 28, 2013 | E-commerce and E-retailing, Mobile, Search engine marketing

Consumers made a total of 3.2 million online searches for flights in May, over 17% of which were made on mobile devices, reveals a new independent report, “Flights Sector Report – Issue 9”, by digital marketing agency, Greenlight. The report charts the most popular terms consumers used to look for flights to domestic, short haul […]

Consumers made a total of 3.2 million online searches for flights in May, over 17% of which were made on mobile devices, reveals a new independent report, “Flights Sector Report – Issue 9”, by digital marketing agency, Greenlight.


The report charts the most popular terms consumers used to look for flights to domestic, short haul and long haul destinations on Google UK. It also reveals the most visible sites for those searches and the size of the potential online audience split by computers (laptops/desktops) and mobile devices (smartphones & tablets).
According to the research, ‘Cheap flights’ was the most queried term accounting for 17% (450,000) of all flight-related searches using computers and 20% (110,000) of all searches made via mobile devices.
Whilst queries for flights to short haul destinations were most popular on laptops/desktops, accounting for a 31% share of overall flight-related searches, those for long haul destinations dominated on mobile devices, accounting for 28%.
The ten most queried flight-related terms on computers and mobile devices were similar.
However, there were two exceptions, ‘flights to thailand’ and ‘flights to florida’. The former featured among the top ten searches made on computers but not mobile devices, whilst the latter featured in those via mobile devices but not computers.
League tables in Greenlight’s report ranked the most visible sites in the organic listings*, paid listings** and across both (Integrated Search).
Skyscanner was the most visible site in the Natural Search listings both on desktops and mobile devices.
Whilst Opodo topped Greenlight’s table charting the 20 most visible advertisers on laptops/desktops, attaining a 73% share of voice, Cheapflights dominated on mobile devices with 72%.
Cheapflights also attained the highest share of Integrated Search visibility and was the most visible site for flight-related searches on both laptops/desktops and mobile devices.
Source: http://greenlightdigital.com

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