Top 10 holiday-related search terms revealed

Notting Hill Carnival is almost here and for those toying with the idea of getting away over the August bank holiday, 'cheap holidays', 'holidays' and 'last minute holidays' could well be the terms seeing a flurry of search activity on Google, if the most popular holiday-related search term trends in the UK for May and June are anything to go by.

Leading specialist search and social marketing agency, Greenlight, analysed over 3,000 keywords used by UK consumers between May and June when they looked for holidays online and identified the ten most popular terms used to source them.

Top 10 holiday-related search terms (May-June 2011)

Source: Google AdWords

Clocking up a total of two million searches, the term 'Cheap holidays' came tops. 'Holidays' and 'last minute holidays' followed in second and third place with searches totalling 1 million and 751,000, respectively.

'Last minute holidays' saw the highest jump in search volumes (50%) rising from 301,000 in May to 450,000 in June. 'All inclusive holidays' likewise enjoyed a 23% surge. However, those for 'Direct holidays', fourth in the rankings, saw the greatest fall. June volumes slumped 18% on May's level.

Turkey was the only destination to feature in the top ten with the term 'turkey holidays' in seventh place raking in a total of 110,000 queries. In fact June's search volume rose 22% on May.

It remains to be seen which destinations and terms will be flavour of the month in August and if they might even mimic May-June trends. Regardless, says Greenlight, online vendors need to have their fingers on the pulse when it comes to the terms consumers use to find and purchase goods. The insight can be used to optimise their websites so they are visible to searches, thereby maximising on the online opportunity when it comes to netting traffic and potential sales.