google travel - Google News

I was hanging fire to blog this to see if anything came of the rumours....not yet it would appear....google travel - Google News: "Travel looks like Google's next target Times Online, UK - Apr 17, 2006
... has kept the subject of the press briefing tightly under wraps, and it is by no means necessarily the case that the London briefing will involve Google Travel. ...

Google Travel Coming Soon?
Search Engine Watch - Apr 17, 2006
... Google: Senior Account Executive, Travel Vertical.' Russell explains that the job posting details 'sounds' that 'Google is building a Google Travel brand.' I ...

Google to launch travel portal?
Monsters and Critics.com, UK - Apr 18, 2006
... account executive for a travel vertical, was posted before the Easter weekend and analysts are speculating that the travel vertical will be Google Travel. ...
Is Google going to launch a travel portal? Eye For Travel
Google Travel Rumor On The Road WebProNews"


Yahoo flexes its muscles in travel search business - Technology - International Herald Tribune: " Yahoo flexes its muscles in travel search business By Bob Tedeschi The New York Times THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2006

Yahoo announced last week that it had integrated its FareChase technology into its main search engine, so that it could scan multiple sites for airlines, hotels and car rentals and show the lowest-price offers directly in results whenever someone typed in, say, 'lowest fares to Las Vegas.' Previously, users had to click around Yahoo's site to gain access to FareChase, or turn to one of the handful of competing so-called meta- search sites like SideStep, Kayak or Mobissimo for a similar specialized search. The move is perhaps the most aggressive countermeasure a major search engine has taken against the growing number of sites that specialize in searching specific categories, like jobs, medical information, shopping or travel.

Indeed, the competition between Yahoo and its travel-specific counterparts appears to be moving to a new level. Yahoo initially responded to the threat in 2004 by buying FareChase, then SideStep's chief competitor, for an undisclosed sum. FareChase became an obscure corner on Yahoo's site, while speculation mounted as to how the company would ultimately use the technology.

Google last year began offering some travel-specific search results where users who typed in a travel route and dates were given a search box with some information already filled in, along with links to online travel agencies to find prices and book the flights. But analysts say Google's offering is far less sophisticated than Yahoo's or that of meta-search competitors. (Google declined to comment on such comparisons.)

Other analysts say they believe that Google and MSN may simply follow Yahoo's lead and buy the niche search players. "If someone wants to play catch-up fast, that's the way to go," said Dougherty, of Nielsen/NetRatings.

Life just got easier for travelers looking for bargains on the Web, while for some of Yahoo's competitors, things just got a bit more complicated.

Yahoo announced last week that it had integrated its FareChase technology into its main search engine, so that it could scan multiple sites for airlines, hotels and car rentals and show the lowest-price offers directly in results whenever someone typed in, say, "lowest fares to Las Vegas."

Previously, users had to click around Yahoo's site to gain access to FareChase, or turn to one of the handful of competing so-called meta- search sites like SideStep, Kayak or Mobissimo for a similar specialized search.

The move is perhaps the most aggressive countermeasure a major search engine has taken against the growing number of sites that specialize in searching specific categories, like jobs, medical information, shopping or travel.

Indeed, the competition between Yahoo and its travel-specific counterparts appears to be moving to a new level. Yahoo initially responded to the threat in 2004 by buying FareChase, then SideStep's chief competitor, for an undisclosed sum. FareChase became an obscure corner on Yahoo's site, while speculation mounted as to how the company would ultimately use the technology.

It also comes on the threshold of a major media campaign by a rival travel search engine, Kayak.com.

"This is a very smart move for Yahoo," said Heather Dougherty, an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet measurement company. "It's the first time any of the big search engines have tried to integrate this type of searching into their results. And FareChase finally isn't going to be off sitting on its own."

Rather, it is central to a Yahoo user's experience, or at least close to it. Last week, for instance, typing in a search for "flights New York to San Francisco" returned the lowest price for that flight over the next few months - $279 for a trip from May 5 to May 9 - and a box offering the chance to search other dates. If a user's location has been indicated in previous Yahoo searches - on the site's Local or Maps sections, for instance - simply typing in "flights to San Francisco" will produce the same result.

"This is definitely a step for Yahoo, and a step for the industry," Jasper Malcolmson, director of Yahoo travel services, said about the integration of meta-search with general search results. The integration of FareChase highlights a series of upgrades to Yahoo's travel offering, including introduction of a satellite map service showing hotel locations.

Yahoo's new functionality could significantly increase user exposure to this type of service, which has until now struggled to attract attention. Just 12 percent of Internet travel shoppers now visit such meta-search sites, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research, a technology consulting firm. But that figure is twice what it was just a year ago, despite the fact that none of these services has done much advertising at all.

Roughly 4.4 million people visited such sites in March, according to Nielsen/NetRatings - a tiny number compared with the number of visits to Expedia, the leading travel commerce site, which attracted 16.4 million.

But FareChase and its two biggest competitors, Kayak.com and SideStep.com, offer a significantly different experience from other travel sites. SideStep, for instance, scans the inventories of 100 airline sites, as well as that of the online travel agency Orbitz.com, and lists the best fares on a single page.

In terms of revenue, travel search sites have much ground to make up to challenge the general travel sites. SideStep and Kayak are privately held, and Yahoo does not break out revenue figures for its FareChase division, but analysts said these sites earned only a small fraction of what the big travel agencies did, because they handle far fewer bookings and have fewer sources of revenue....

Kayak and SideStep earn undisclosed commissions for customers they refer to suppliers, but as Rob Solomon, SideStep's chief executive, said, "The challenge for all of us is scale - how to go from three to five million users to seven to 10 million."

Google last year began offering some travel-specific search results where users who typed in a travel route and dates were given a search box with some information already filled in, along with links to online travel agencies to find prices and book the flights. But analysts say Google's offering is far less sophisticated than Yahoo's or that of meta-search competitors. (Google declined to comment on such comparisons.)

Other analysts say they believe that Google and MSN may simply follow Yahoo's lead and buy the niche search players. "If someone wants to play catch-up fast, that's the way to go," said Dougherty, of Nielsen/NetRatings"