In Time for Summer, Top Travel Sites

Every Summer people flock to the online travel sites to make their travel plans. This year, despite the flagging economy, is no different. Here is a round-up of the top travel sites. When you book your tickets, give one of these sites a try.



Top Online Travel Sites
There are a lot of great travel sites out there and if I neglected to include yours, let me know in the comments. The list below is comprised of flight aggregators, where you can find flights from multiple airlines. Single airline sites like JetBlue or SouthWest are not included, nor are sites that are focused on hotels or reviews.

1. Expedia - www.expedia.com
The big grand-daddy of online travel aggregators is Expedia. With an Alexa Rank of 351 and climbing, Expedia is cruising through the downturn with ease. With services for flights, hotels and car rentals this one-stop shop should be on your list of sites to visit when booking tickets for your Summer travel.
Alexa Rank: 351

2. Trip Advisor - www.tripadvisor.com
Nipping at the heels of Expedia we have Trip Advisor with an Alexa Rank of 376. Historically Trip Advisor has been a site focused on travel reviews. But with the addition of flight and hotel booking, and more, Trip Advisor has grown into a serious Expedia competitor.
Alexa Rank: 376

3. Travelocity - www.travelocity.com
You may know travelocity from its garden gnome mascot, seen on many television commercials. Currently at number 3 on the list of top online travel sites with a rank of 682, Travelocity is not faring as well in the downturn with traffic to the site showing a slight downturn.
Alexa Rank: 682

4. Orbitz - www.orbitz.com
Another site that has done quite a bit on online advertising is Orbitz, whose commercials might be confused with Orbit gum, both of which use 50's stylizations and a blue color scheme. Orbitz at Alexa Rank of 693 is still one of the most popular online travel sites, but has seen some decline over the past two years. Like Expedia and Travelocity, Orbitz is a full-featured online travel aggregator.
Alexa Rank: 693

5. Priceline - www.priceline.com
Yet another site with funny television commercials is Priceline, whose commercials feature William Shatner egging people on to make low bids. Priceline is quite unlike the other travel aggregators and allows people to make offers/bids on travel packages which may or may not be accepted by the provider. As you can see from the graph, Priceline has been experiencing some significant growth over the past year, which is an impressive feat in this economy.
Alexa Rank: 782

6. Kayak - www.kayak.com
Kayak, while lesser known than many of the sites higher up in this list, has a loyal user base that continues to come back for the Kayak's innovative features such as price histories and advanced searching tools. While Kayak hasn't experienced much growth over the last 12 months, its two year growth has been impressive. This site is a must for folks who are comfortable with their advanced interface.
Alexa Rank: 915

7. Travelzoo - www.travelzoo.com
You may have noted that the other sites in this list show a fair amount of seasonal variation. Travelzoo, strangely, does not. Travelzoo has been around for ages and their site looks very much like it did in 1998. Despite their old-school design, it remains a popular destination.
Alexa Rank: 1,312

8. HotWire - www.hotwire.com
At number eight on our list we have HotWire with an Alexa rank of 1,519. Hotwire, which started with an odd business model, where you would book flights with vague flight times on unnamed airlines, is now very similar to the Expedia and Orbitz sites. While not as popular as the biggest players, Hotwire has been experiencing some growth over the last two years.
Alexa Rank: 1,519

9. CheapTickets - www.cheaptickets.com
The economic downturn has not been kind to cheaptickets, whose traffic is off by almost 50% over the last two years. But don't let that stop you from visiting the site, which has all the features that you would expect from a travel aggregator.
Alexa Rank: 2,014

10. CheapoAir - www.cheapoair.com
CheapOAir is a relative newcomer whose traffic has grown significantly over the last two years and is now running neck and neck with Cheap Tickets. No special features here to recommend cheapoair, but it does have all the features that you would expect, plus it has the word "cheap" in the name, which is bound to garner a few extra clicks.
Alexa Rank: 2,580

For more online travel sites give Alexa's Site Finder a try (Travel), or take a look at the Top Travel Sites in the Directory.

Facebook Juggernaut Overtakes YouTube

Observant tweeter nametrader noticed that Facebook has been continuing its rise up the rankings and has recently unseated YouTube to become the 3rd most popular site on the Web according to Alexa's Daily Rankings yesterday. Take a look at the graph below showing the daily reach for Facebook (in blue) and YouTube.

Next up for Facebook? Google and Yahoo:
I don't expect Facebook to pass Yahoo (in Red) any time soon, but if the current trend holds Facebook could pass Yahoo by March of next year and may actually catch Google six months after that.

Don't forget the Grads... Top Used Car Sites

It is that time of year again, with Summer fast approaching, and students preparing for graduation. I know a little something about Alexa's readers, and you are a bit wealthier than most, so I'm assuming that you will all be buying cars for your graduates? Listed below are the top sites to help you begin your search for the perfect used car for your favorite graduate.

But first, a word from our sponsor, amazon.com:


Top Used Car Sites

As with so many of these lists, sometimes we are comparing apples and oranges. For example, some of the sites below sell both used and new cars. Some of these license their data from other sources, and some sites are not included at all because they are not "sites" but simply sections of much larger sites, like autos.msn.com, for example (who just happen to source their data from the #1 site on our list, AutoTrader.)

1. AutoTrader - autotrader.com
Not only is AutoTrader the biggest online used car site, it is also used to power a number of the sites in this list.
Alexa Rank: 886

2. Edmunds.com - edmunds.com
Edmunds started off in 1995 as a vehicle research website and now has a healthy business helping to sell used cars, powered by AutoTrader.
Alexa Rank: 1,130

3. Cars.com - cars.com
The number three site in our list is Cars.com, started in 1998, and owned by a conglomerate of Newspaper/Media companies.
Alexa Rank: 1,592

4. CarMax - carmax.com
Carmax is an interesting hybrid of 100 real-world car lots spread across the United States and a large online website. The advantage is that all the cars undergo the same inspection process and are warrantied and have a 5 day money back refund policy.
Alexa Rank: 4,110

5. Carfax - carfax.com
Carfax is the service that people use to make sure that they aren't buying a car that was previously "totalled". They compile data from 20 different sources so that you can see your car's official history. They also have a thorough listing of used cars for sale.
Alexa Rank: 6,615

6. CarsDirect - carsdirect.com
Number 6 on our list is Los Angeles-based CarsDirect, first launched in 2001 as a service to connect you with dealers in your area. They have been selling used cars since 2002.
Alexa Rank: 6,904

7. Vehix.com - vehix.com
Vehix.com was launched in 1996 as a automotive research portal and now has an inventory of nearly 1 million vehicles listed. Vehix.com is also one of the only sites in our roundup to experience uninterrupted growth during the economic downturn, no doubt due to their continued television advertising.
Alexa Rank: 9,567

8. Carsoup - carsoup.com
These lists always contain at least one surprise for me, and CarSoup is it. I still don't know much about them (how about an "about us" link guys) but one look at their brightly colored site and you'll see that they definitely stand out from the crowd.
Alexa Rank: 30,383

9. AutoBytel - autobytel.com
AutoBytel claims to have been the first auto-buying site, launching in 1995, and are now a publicly traded company: Nasdaq- ABTL. The AutoBytel site is beginning to look a little old-school and they have allowed eight other online car sites pass them in the rankings.
Alexa Rank: 34,125

That's it for our list today. Don't forget your Grad!