Kayak users in January made more than 100 million travel queries on the site and through its mobile apps for the first time, a move which coincides with Google data showing that searches for "Kayak flights" in the US was among the fastest-growing flight-related searches in the last 12 months.
Clearly, if there was any query fallout for Kayak from the All American Muslim controversy in December, it was short-lived.
The jump to 100 million requests for travel information on Kayak sites and through its mobile apps in January was apparently a substantial increase considering that the travel metasearch company previously revealed it averaged 75.4 million queries per month for the first nine months of 2011.
Kayak was on TV with its advertisements a lot in January and assuredly this helped it reach the milestone.
"Thanks for deciding to go meet face-to-face instead of using a Web cam," a Kayak blog post quipped about the 100 million mark.
And, if you are keeping count, Kayak says its mobile apps have been downloaded more than 12 million times through January 2012.
In November 2011, in its most recent financial filing in connection with a potential IPO, Kayak stated that about 7% of user queries during the first three quarters of 2011 "resulted from traffic-generating arrangements" with search engines, such as Google.
Kayak's traffic-generating arrangement with Google apparently is bearing fruit as US searches for "Kayak flights" leapfrogged 190% in the previous 12 months, Google says.
And, that search pace eclipsed increases for other flight-related searches for online travel agency, metasearch and airline brands in the US on Google. Consider these increases for travel-brand-related flight searches:
- Priceline flights, 70%, and
And, Google users continue to look for flight-search bargains. Consider the increases for cheap-flight-related searches:
- Super cheap flights, 140%,
- Cheap airline tickets, more than 50%,
- Cheap Florida flights, 40%, and
And, frequent-flyer related searches rose more than 15% in the last year. Specifically, the tallies of the highest-increasing search terms related to frequent flyers were:
- Frequent flier calculator, 90%
- 50000 bonus miles, 70%, and
But, some flight-related searches on Google in the US nosedived in the past 12 months. Posting decreases were:
- Upgrades, more than -20%,
- Flight insurance, more than -15%,
- One-way flights, more than -10-%
- Direct flights, nearly -10%,
- Travel insurance, nearly -10%, and