Free Travel Search Data from Kayak – Brilliant Linkbait

Kayak have just launched a search volume trends tool at Kayak.com/trends showing travel search trends and price index data from a global perspective. The reporting includes: most popular destinations, biggest upward trends and downward trends in destination search and travel pricing. The data can be exported by CSV and includes pricing data, daily, in the file.

As reported by Travolution:

KAYAK Chief Scientist, Giorgos Zacharia, an accomplished expert in predictive modeling, who developed the KAYAK Travel Indexâ„¢ added, “the index essentially models how much an average traveler is willing to pay to visit a given destination by analyzing search behavior and selection patterns across all destinations searched on KAYAK sites.”

Sweet. Here’s a screenshot of the tool:

So what’s this got to do with SEO? Giving this level of insight away free is such a smart move, from a competitive standpoint and a link acquisition perspective. Imagine the references and citations from the travel press and blogging community a data source like this can generate! It will be very interesting to watch how this URL attracts links in the coming months.

BY Richard Baxter AT 12:22pm ON Friday, 9 October 2009