Rail Europe scientific search strategy

Illustrates the ever increasing importance of search engine optimisation ans search engine marketing in the online travel sector:

All Aboard the SEM Train: "Roman Godzich, a man with an incredible sense of wit that is only outweighed by his search engine marketing knowledge. As the vice president of e-business for Rail Europe, Godzich has his search strategy down to a science.
One of the biggest brands you might not have heard of, Rail Europe offers the most comprehensive selection of European rail products to the North American market . Let�s just say that the online business touches about 1 million customers every year. Oh, and his search budget is north of 50 percent of online spending."

He reiterates the holy grail of search ..track, analyse and tweak again again and again

"His golden rule for advertisers: tracking, tracking and more tracking. He adds that there is no point to search if you aren’t measuring. He is also a fan of running tests.

“During the low season I was constantly perturbed by the question of people researching at work and buying at home,” Mr. Godzich said. “So I ran a test. I shut down a set of keywords during the day to see the effect on sales at night.”

He did this three times with the same results. He then ran the same test in reverse, shutting down a set of keywords in the evening. Sure enough, the pattern was clear.

“This leads me to think that engines have a wider reach than we realize,” Mr. Godzich said. “If you want to be present at time of purchase, you have to be there at the time of consideration.” "

Your websites appearance in search results can be crucial to your brand:
"On the subject of branding and engine reach, he points out that natural search results are critical. In addition to ranking high, he urges marketers to make sure the title and description support the brand. He has found that if consumers recognize your brand in that URL, they are much more likely to click on a sponsored link when ready to buy."

Staying relevant as competition gets heated

Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch, reckons competition and innovation in the online travel sector is hotting up concluding from her analysis of Cityseearch that "The ones who'll survive in this user-generated glut are those who can keep the users not only on their site, but also producing"

Citysearch touts human touch in local ad competition - MarketWatch: "Citysearch touts human relations: Staying relevant as competition gets heated"

The article reckons Citysearch main strength is that "Citysearch -- unlike other search engines that deify technology -- relies on those good old fashion humans to either create content or establish relationships with local advertisers.
Ask.com is a search engine and not a content site, said Ferguson. At Citysearch's core, it is a search and directory, but it adds layers of editorial and user content -- like ratings and reviews -- that other search engines don't.


She sees Google as entering this competition with Google Co-op, "which is designed to get users to create useful pages about certain topics. The idea behind Google Co-op is to take the Wikipedia model and apply it across various topics, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told me last week.

Morrow said that Citysearch is also playing around with the idea of "user-generated Wikis." Both Morrow and Ferguson said they also plan to introduce new incentives to get users to register and offer up their ratings or reviews or just personal information. Those incentives range from streamlining the registration process to recognizing those who contribute the most."

Citysearch stats and estimates: In "April, Citysearch saw 11.2 million unique visitors, up 122% from a year ago, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The company also swung to a profit in the first quarter, up from losing money in the year-ago period, on sales that increased by 65%, according to Briggs Ferguson, Citysearch CEO...

Francisco estimates that "gets a ballpark figure that Citysearch generated about $15 million in sales in the first quarter....Citysearch served up 4.1 million search queries in March vs. 254,000 at Ask.com local, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Also, based on traffic figures, Citysearch traffic grew faster than Yahoo which grew its audience base to its local site by 23% in the same period"