According to Hitwise’s latest Travel – Agencies report, 68.78% of all visits to the online ‘Travel – Agencies’ industry went to the top 10 websites for the month of April 2008. 78.78% went to the top 20 websites and 93.11% went to the top 100 websites.
The monthly report provides Hitwise data on:

Websites That Entered and [...]

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Microsoft announced on Saturday that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo! after the two companies could not come to an agreement on a price and other terms.
At the final meeting on Saturday Yahoo said the lowest price they could accept was $37 per share. Microsoft offered $33 per share (up from the initial [...]

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Until last week Yahoo! minimum bid for sponsored search keywords was a fixed $0.10. Now Yahoo! has decided to move away from this fixed minimum bid to a variable minimum bid.
Yahoo! Search Marketing has introduced their new pricing structure. Until last week Yahoo! minimum bid for sponsored search keywords was a fixed $0.10. Now [...]

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Overseas Trips by Irish Residents increased by 11% to 547,600 in February 2008 compared to the 494,600 recorded in February 2007, according to Central Statistics Office.
The number of overseas visits to the Ireland increased by just 2% to 547,600 during this period, compared with 460,600 in Feburary 2007.
The growth stemmed from increases in visitor numbers [...]

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Far more consumers say they will restrain their holiday spending this year than last year, according to a survey from AOL Travel and Zogby International. Signs of economic uncertainty among consumers help explain consumers’ increased spending restraint. However increasing use of the internet for holiday shopping is a positive sign for Internet retailers.
Survey Reveals How [...]

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Google say they have developed a image search software intended to “see” the content of images and do for digital images on the Web what the Google’s PageRank software did for searches of Web pages.
On Thursday at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google scientists presented VisualRank, an algorithm for blending image-recognition [...]

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The Google marketing manager Alexandra Kenin informs that Google AdWords now offers mobile image ads. The ads are the same as typical Google image ads but small enough to fit on a mobile phone’s screen.
The new service is available in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, [...]

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Microsoft is the mystery buyer of Farecast, the Seattle online travel startup. Farecast is a travel search provider which predicts when there is the most ideal time for travellers to purchase tickets.
John Cook is reporting that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft for $115 million.
The buyout of Farecast was confirmed on the Farecast Blog:
‘We’re excited [...]

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Web 2.0 offers a number of opportunities for hoteliers in sales and marketing process. It became apparent that the economy is having a significant impact on customers travel plans. Consumers are smarter in every facet of their buying behaviour and marketers need to do a lot to ensure that they meet all customers’ expectations and [...]

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