VacationRentals.com vs. Holiday-rentals.com

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
la vache!
Posts: 11065
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 7:22 pm

Post by la vache! »

This is from an article in the Guardian 6th June 2005 about Google setting up its London office
In France, he notes, 60 per cent of consumers use Google as a search engine - "the consumers are voting with their fingers". Google says it drives around 60 per cent of searches in the UK but in Spain the company already has a stunning 96 per cent of the traffic.
It is closer to what I would have guessed, I only ever use Google.co.uk or Google.fr!
e-richard
Posts: 5008
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:33 am
Location: Algarve, Portugal
Contact:

Post by e-richard »

You were right to be sceptical Paolo. I was wrong :oops:

I went back to read the small print on how they measure all this, and its all a bit confusing. In Europe, unlike the US, what Nielsen are measuring is usage of all websites with search engines, Web Portal, or general community websites. Its not therefore a measure of search engines themslelves. In fact, to make matters worse, the data I quoted was from Sept 2003, which I should have noticed and thus questioned MSN as a search engine, but as a Portal, I guess its more plausible.

My humble apologies for alarming anyone with my poor analysis of the data. I should have known better.
RiverKen
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:22 pm
Location: Oregon USA
Contact:

Post by RiverKen »

It is interesting that Google.com gives different results than Google.co.uk.

When I search for (vacation rentals) at Google.com
#1 VRBO.com
#2 VacationRentals.com

But when I search Google.co.uk
#1 VacationRentals.com
#2 VRBO.com

and Google.fr
#1 VRBO.com
#2 VacationRentals.com

Interesting how the algorithm is a little bit different in different regions. These are two big US site so the regional Google arnt just favoring local sites.
User avatar
paolo
Posts: 3885
Joined: Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:18 pm
Location: Provence, France
Contact:

Post by paolo »

RiverKen wrote:Interesting how the algorithm is a little bit different in different regions. These are two big US site so the regional Google arnt just favoring local sites.
In the UK, the term vacation rentals is not used, we say holiday rentals, which is why you don't see much variation on UK Google.

If you search for 'holiday rentals' on Google.com, the first US site is Cyberrentals at number 3, and on Google.co.uk, it is Cyberrentals at number 7.

What search engines are working on now (if they have not already done it) is a better grasp of linguistics. So if you typed 'holiday rentals' into Google.com, sites that are optimised for the term 'vacation rentals' and may not even include the phrase 'holiday rentals', will still rank well for the search. Google will realise that the two terms are synonymous.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
RiverKen
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:22 pm
Location: Oregon USA
Contact:

Post by RiverKen »

Rather than Vacation Rentals, which term is more popular in UK,
"Holiday Rentals" or "Self Catering"?
User avatar
paolo
Posts: 3885
Joined: Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:18 pm
Location: Provence, France
Contact:

Post by paolo »

RiverKen wrote:Rather than Vacation Rentals, which term is more popular in UK,
"Holiday Rentals" or "Self Catering"?
Interesting question. The answer seems to be 'self catering'.

One way to measure this is to see how many web pages are optimised for each phrase. If a page is really optimised for a phrase you can assume that the phrase will appear in the html Title. You can search Google for all pages it has indexed with a word or phrase in it like this:

allintitle:"self catering" result: 4,200,000
allintitle:"holiday rentals" result: 600,000
(allintitle:"holiday rental" result: 357,000)

Of course this does not necessarily mean that 'self catering' is more popular among searchers, just that it is more popular among websites trying to get their business. But one would assume a strong correlation.

Another way is to query the UK Overture keyword tool. Overture measures the number of searches done in a month, I don't remember which search engine(s) it covers but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't give a result for 'holiday rentals', only the singular form; and there is no result for 'self catering' on its own, the best it can do is the two results below:

holiday rental: 21895
self catering holiday 75332
self catering accommodation: 25457

Or another way is to look at my Google pay-per-click results for similar phrases which are as follows:

provence holiday rentals: 1332 impressions
provence self catering: 2200 impressions

'provence holiday rentals' was served up 2 positions higher on average, which means that the difference in popularity between the two phrases is greater than those numbers suggest.

So 'self catering' wins.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
RiverKen
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:22 pm
Location: Oregon USA
Contact:

Post by RiverKen »

Thanks for the analisys! It will help with my keyword targeting.

Looks like Yahoo agrees with you
They have a Vacation Rentals catagory in US
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Econo ... n_Rentals/

and the same as Self Catering in the UK Yahoo
http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec ... _Catering/
Guest3
Posts: 1588
Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 11:24 am

Post by Guest3 »

On reading how many people advertise with H-R and the good returns ..I've 'taken the bull by the horns' so to speak and placed an ad for our villa this week on their website. So far, they are the most expensive site I've advertised with.

Just hope we get some return out of this as I was very reluctant to part with £155!
Fraise
Posts: 2079
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 8:25 am
Location: Charente Maritime and Middle England

Post by Fraise »

Mmm,I know nothing of the site you are referring to but I pay that with Visit France and am wondering if it is value for money.I have bookings from this for this year but only in the peak weeks and now we have to pay to have pictures uploaded I just don't know.The jury is out for me,I hope it works for you. :?
RiverKen
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:22 pm
Location: Oregon USA
Contact:

Crystal and Tansy How did you do?

Post by RiverKen »

Crystal and Tansy

Crystal, How did you do with H-R?

Tansy, How did you do with VacationRentals.com
:D
Post Reply