An Analysis of Travel Information Searching on the Web

In this article, the phenomenon of searching for travel information on the Web is reported. The issues of how predominant travel searching is on the Web, how people are searching for travel information on the Web, and what terms people are using to express their travel-related information needs are investigated. In this research, 2,465,145 interactions from 534,507 users of the commercial Web search engine, Dogpile.com, on May 6, 2005 are analyzed employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Findings show that, at most, approximately 6.5% of Web queries are for travel searching. Geographical information accounts for nearly 50% of this travel searching, with general travel information accounting for just less than 10%. An analysis of individual terms in travel queries shows there is substantial searching for travel-specific websites such as mapquest, travelocity, and orbitz. Travel searchers appear to be target-specific events, again showing a strong geographical bias along with a temporal component of the underlying information intent. The distribution of travel topics is skewed, with several topics being “very focused” and others being “very general.” A classification scheme for travel-related Web queries was developed, which should be helpful for other researchers in the online travel searching area. The implications for both content providers of travel information and for searchers of travel information on the Web are discussed.