September 2014
September saw only a few clear winners, but many more losers. One winner was gadventures.com, whose ranking increases are high enough that they will probably be enjoying a jump in sales inquiries, particularly around generic searches for “tour companies” and a number of specific tours that they may be targetting, such as “cuba tours” and possibly “europe tours”. Interestingly, their rank for “trekking” has been sliding consistently since May, and is now buried at 52 from a May 26th rank of 13. Less positive are the gains by goway.com, since these are in the face of a downward trend since May.
The losses this month are easer to spot. Luckily for belairtravel.com, most of their losses were buried too deep to affect sales inquiries, plus they continue to have solid first page ranks for variants on the search phrase “travel agency”. Although most of the losses at redtag.ca were minor drops, because so many of their ranks are high, they may have felt a small decrease in visitors (their very solid rankings for variants on searches for “vacation deals” seem unaffected). Sadly for the small travel company at stclairtravel.com, they suddenly lost three of their first page ranks and look like they’re about to completely fall off the radar: their sales inquiries will have likely been impacted by this situation. Another loser was sunwing.ca, but strong overall ranks suggest that they will likely bounce back quickly. When compared with ranks from five months ago in May, trafalgar.com has lost rank on 15 terms, and gained on only 10, representing a slow slide in the wrong direction, especially around “europe tours”, “ireland tours”, and “tours of italy”, which were all strongly ranked prior to this month. Like Sunwing, losses for vacations.aircanada.com are probably temporary, given their overall strong positions. The overall trend for wholesaletravel.com is heading upwards, so these losses are probably just a blip. Lastly, all of the losses suffered by yyztravel.com are buried too deeply to have any negative effect on sales inquiries.
Below is an alphabetical list of tour companies and related travel portals located within the Toronto-region. After each domain are the numbers of search terms for which the domain has increased in rank, decreased in rank, and remained unchanged in rank (these numbers are separated by slashes). Clicking on these links will summon detailed comparisons of rankings for each domain in comparison with tripadvisor.ca, whose powerful rankings increased this month on 48 search phrases, declined on 26, and remained unchanged on 10:
adventurecenter.com 6/10/2
avalonwaterways.ca 4/2/2
belairtravel.com 11/21/5 (Mississauga)
flightcentre.ca 24/22/19
flightnetwork.com 17/17/0 (Oakville)
gadventures.com 20/11/13
galatravels.com 5/7/7 (Markham)
globusjourneys.ca 17/15/3
goway.com 14/6/3
insightvacations.com 4/5/2
itravel2000.com 14/18/7 (Mississauga)
polotravelltd.com 8/6/2 (Concord)
redtag.ca 7/14/26
searstravel.ca 24/19/4
signaturevacations.com 12/10/15
stclairtravel.com 0/8/0
sunwing.ca 6/14/24
theadventuretravelcompany.com 2/6/3
trafalgar.com 8/16/1
traveldiscounters.ca 21/18/3
travelzoo.com 18/19/4
tripcentral.ca 30/28/11 (Hamilton)
vacations.aircanada.com 16/26/10
wholesaletravel.com 3/14/1
yyztravel.com 1/9/0(Thornhill)
A smaller alphabetical list of domains not located in the Toronto region is noted below. These domains appeared in our research with enough prominence to deserve mention:
airtransat.ca 20/8/4
expedia.ca 10/11/18
intrepidtravel.com 13/10/6
selloffvacations.com 17/16/20
travelocity.ca 22/7/6
westjet.com 17/8/10
