Christmas And Ski Queries Start Rising In Late July

By Michael Wicks, Industry Analyst

The nights are falling earlier and X-Factor is starting this weekend. This must mean it’s the end of Summer. Surely too early for people to start thinking about Christmas holidays and ski season though?

Well, in a nutshell, no.





Graph 1 shows the seasonality of Christmas-related queries over the past four years, with the purple line representing the average. Christmas queries tend to increase in volume from around week 30 (late July).






However, as queries begin to peak, the average depth (number of ads shown per query, or auction intensity) begins to fall, as is evident in Graph 2. This is a common scenario across a number of categories; when query volume increases this is often because there are more distinct queries and advertisers are slow to take advantage of this.






The story is much the same for ski queries, which also start to rise from late July, rising steadily before peaking in week 2 of the following year (please see Chart 3). Average depth is fairly stable for ski-related queries, with a slight fall towards the end of the ski season.


So, the lesson for advertisers is that they should already be planning their Christmas and ski season activity, to give them a head start before the rush at the end of the year.

Seasonal Query Trends

In previous blog posts, we’ve looked at how queries related to overall Travel or particular Travel products vary over time, or in the build up to key events.

Our latest piece of analysis takes a look at the types of holiday queries that Google users search for, and how these vary throughout the year.

Key Findings:
• There are twice as many Cheap or Budget queries in summer as there are in the winter
• We get 3 - 4 times more Late or Last minute queries in the summer compared with the winter.
• The proportion of both Cheap or Budget and Late or Last minute peaks in summer months and declines in winter, accounting for around 15% and 5% of total queries, respectively.
• The opposite is true for Destination and Generic queries, where the proportion of queries increases in the winter and declines in the summer.
• In terms of volume, Destination and Generic queries account for over double those of other types in the winter. However, in the summer Cheap or Budget queries account for nearly the same volume as destination queries.
Examples of the different types queries used in this analysis include:
Generic: Holidays, holidays 2010,
Destination: Holidays in Spain, Dubai Holidays
Cheap/Budget: Cheap Holidays, Low cost holidays, Budget Breaks
Cheap & Destination: Cheap holiday in Cyprus, All Inclusive holidays Turkey
Late/Last Minute: Late deal holidays, last minute holidays abroad, late availability deals.

Posted by Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst.