The Function of Travel Websites and How to Evaluate Them

by Neala Schwartzberg, Editor, OffbeatTravel.com

Travel Websites and Travel Print Publications Serve Different Functions

One of the most important differences between print and internet is the way potential travelers use them, and their function in promoting a destination, hotel, or event. Print publications are like sprinters - they can reach a lot of people very quickly. They create a buzz, an awareness. With luck, people think to themselves "Hey, I want to go there someday." And that's generally the end of the effectiveness of a print promotion. But its purpose has been served. Folks know about the destination.

A few weeks, months, or even a couple of years later, that reader is now ready to visit the hotel, tour the city, enjoy a festival. But where to find out more information? The internet. When people are ready to plan a trip, they hit the internet, type their search terms into Google (far and away the best search engine on the internet) and find an article. Internet publications are in for the long-haul. They hold the information until the reader is ready, then put it on their screen.

Print and internet are not in competition, they work together beautifully to meet the needs of travelers, and the needs of destinations to get out their messages.

Determining Quality of a Website

The easiest way to evaluate the quality of a site is through Google. Google conveniently ranks all websites from 0 to 10. Although no one knows exactly the criteria used, it does have something to do with popularity -- the number of webpages that link to it, and their ranking. And yes, it does seem to be a bit circular. Nonetheless, a higher ranking indicates a higher evaluation. Google itself seems to consider a ranking of 5 or greater as a “medium” grade site. There are advertisers who will only advertise on a site that is ranked a 6 or higher. You'll need to download the google toolbar in order to access their rankings. You can find it at Google Options if you scroll down the page. It will automatically display the PageRank as a green bar. Click on the arrow and the exact ranking will appear.

Traffic estimates are another way to evaluate a site. However, most estimates have serious limitations. Alexa rankings, probably the most often cited, are objective, and updated regularly. However, they are based solely on the surfing habits of those who have downloaded an Alexa toolbar. It's difficult to know the characteristics of these users, or how representative they are of the larger internet-using population. Alexa rankings are most useful for comparing different sites and seeing which ones lead and which ones lag. They have recently started to display statistics on the percentage of visitors from different countries. Another site Ranking.com also tracks the surfing habits of website uses to create a ranking of website popularity.

For websites with Google ads on all pages, the number of impressions is probably an good indication of traffic, but these are not publicly available. And they depend on having the code for the ads on all pages of a site, otherwise traffic will be underestimated.

Statistic programs that use cookies placed on the computers of visitors consistently underestimate traffic because not everyone allows their computers to store these bits of code. Other sites on the internet say they provide traffic estimates, but they provide no information on how often the information is gathered, or how they obtain their information. Thus, they are not particularly useful. Even the statistics generated by the website logs are imperfect. They count robots which access the site and other non-viewers.

The look and feel of a website can sometimes provide a sense of how often the site is updated. Look at the structure of the site. For example is it a travel information website or is it a booking engine that happens to have some travel articles. Look at the contributors. Are a few writers using it to publish their work? Finally, are contributors paid? Although websites make little money, paying contributors can indicate a commitment to a quality site.

Another potential short-coming, depending on your point-of-view, is the focus of some of the services on visitors from the United States of America. I can tell you right now, many of my visitors come from other English-speaking countries, and from countries in which English is not the dominant language but where many people are comfortable reading in English. And, through the wonders of translation programs, even read the article in their native language. Why aren't these people counted? They are coming over here to visit and making airline reservations, hotel reservations, touring the sights.

Finally, why the fixation on monthly visitors? It's a left-over from the days of print magazines. No one asks a newspaper about monthly circulation. It's obviously inappropriate because newspapers are published daily, or weekly. But no one blinks at asking that question about a website, and it is just as inappropriate. Websites are often updated more frequently, and visitors come more than once a month because they knew that there can be new content. And there are also many people who come to read a particular article because they are heading off to that destination, and won't come back until they are ready to go on another vacation. Instead of such spurious data, the focus should be on the average number of daily visitors, or at most weekly. This would be a much more accurate reflection of the traffic.

OffbeatTravel