Looking to get away? You’re not alone!
After surviving a brutal winter, Americans everywhere likely all had the same thought: “VACATION, VACATION!” And in the spirit of beating the winter blues and securing the ideal “vacay,” or maybe to simply gain some inspiration, more than 40 million people visited a travel website in April.
Topping the travel category during April were one-stop-shops that allow consumers to browse and book flights, hotels and transportation, as well as conduct trip research, such as looking up hotel reviews. Trip Advisor was the top site during the month, attracting 12.8 million unique visitors. Priceline and Expedia followed, drawing 10.2 million and 9.8 million visitors, respectively.
Expedia and Priceline were also among the most engaging travel sites in April, as visitors spent more than 11 minutes and 10 minutes surfing these sites, respectively, per person. Overall, Americans spent 17 minutes per person, on average, browsing travel sites.
TOP TRAVEL WEBSITES BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE IN APRIL 2014
| Brand | Brand Or Channel | Unique Audience | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|---|
| – | All Sites | 40,466,000 | 0:17:40 |
| 1 | TripAdvisor | 12,845,000 | 0:07:53 |
| 2 | Priceline Network | 10,204,000 | 0:10:18 |
| 3 | Expedia | 9,810,000 | 0:11:05 |
| 4 | Travel Ad Network | 8,195,000 | 0:08:13 |
| 5 | Travelocity | 4,952,000 | 0:06:45 |
| 6 | Kayak | 4,282,000 | 0:06:01 |
| 7 | Yahoo Travel Websites | 4,113,000 | 0:04:23 |
| 8 | Orbitz Worldwide Network | 3,880,000 | 0:08:43 |
| 9 | Hotwire.com | 3,397,000 | 0:06:30 |
| 10 | Bookingbuddy.com | 1,927,000 | 0:03:38 |
| Source: Nielsen |
Aside from checking out travel sites and dreaming of vacation, most Americans surfed the Internet to search, socialize and shop. Google remained the most popular U.S. Web brand, attracting 153.8 million unique visitors to its websites during the month. Facebook and Yahoo each attracted more than 117.4 million visitors to their sites.
Looking at the overall online audience, 197 million Americans accessed the Internet in April 2014, spending more than 30 hours per person surfing the Web.
Top 10 U.S. Web Brands by Unique Audience in April 2014
| Brand | Brand | Unique Audience (000) | Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 153,818,000 | 2:01:38 | |
| 2 | 117,754,000 | 8:05:02 | |
| 3 | Yahoo | 117,454,000 | 2:10:26 |
| 4 | MSN/WindowsLive/Bing | 114,128,000 | 1:37:48 |
| 5 | YouTube | 101,862,000 | 2:12:50 |
| 6 | Microsoft | 82,560,000 | 0:51:52 |
| 7 | AOL Media Network | 81,016,000 | 1:45:55 |
| 8 | Amazon | 73,482,000 | 0:43:21 |
| 9 | Wikipedia | 63,569,000 | 0:28:36 |
| 10 | Ask Search Network | 56,335,000 | 0:12:18 |
| Source: Nielsen |
