Cheapflights Takes Off in Online Travel Market

Big things are going on at Cheapflights.com. Unique visitors to the site had settled at about 1.5 million for quite some time, but something changed in November, 2007.

Unique visitor counts surged upwards starting in November and reached 3.5 million in January—well over double November’s traffic. The growth was so sharp that Cheapflights composed a press release, further piquing my interest in the growth’s causes and effects. I quickly pulled Compete’s referral data for Cheapflights and found the growth was driven from a variety of channels.

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Varied travel sub-categories contributed to the rapid increase but the most notable referral volume spike was from Search & Portal, which contributed 400,000 more referrals in January than November. Tweaks to the Cheapflights site, SEO, and increased SEM spend could all drive an increase like this in Search & Portal traffic.

Compete’s new Search Analytics Select™ tool can measure precisely this type of Search traffic gain. In fact, Search Analytics Select™ reaches beyond simple referrals and quantifies conversion like transfers from Cheapflights to external partner sites. These transfers are a critical revenue source for Cheapflights; more transfers to Orbitz, Kayak, or American Airlines means more money in Cheapflights’ pockets. Check out what Search Analytics Select™ can tell us from May 2007 to January 2008:

Look at that last dark blue bar: Cheapflights visitors referred from Google who then transfer to Cheapflights’ partner sites grew by 119% in January! Yahoo! and MSN transfer volume growth was just 51%, but the numbers from Google dwarf the other engines, anyway. The traffic growth not only increased Cheapflights’ visibility in the Travel vertical, but additionally is driving noteworthy revenue gains.

Note that 3.5 million monthly visitors is within striking distance of Travel Lead Generator heavyweights like Shermanstravel.com and Travelzoo.com. The next few months will be exciting for Cheapflights to see if traffic and transfer levels hold, grow further, or if decreases in site investment and SEM bring Cheapflights down to earth.