Search ranking factors and rank correlations for greek ferry routes websites

Abstract

The new technologies and the internet has been part of our everyday life and the number of internet users has been increased rapidly in the last decade. It is widely recognized that tourism industry has been extremely influenced by technological developments. Greece is a well-known tourist destination for several decades and the Greek economy heavily relies on the tourism industry. Especially in the summer period it is estimated that more than 23 million of people every year visit Greece and Greek islands. The combination of these two facts has bring many evolutionary changes in the way tourist offices operate. The electronic ticket has become an integral part of the Greek ferry industry and the majority of the travelers choose to book their ferry tickets online. As a result, the Google search results are of vital importance for tourist websites and the final search ranking can lead a website to success or failure. The aim of this thesis is to examine all the different factors that have a small or a large impact on the final Google search rankings. The survey which was made was focusing to Greek ferry route websites. From the survey’s results, some useful conclusions were drawn about the factors, in which the websites need to pay more attention, if they want to improve their rankings in the Google search machine.