I was reading the Why.PH case study on Cebu Pacific. I’m amazed how they’ve manipulated the data, so I just have to explain how the data is misleading in case people out there are really believing the hype.
Their main argument is that Cebu Pacific are loosing traffic and potential customers by using cebupacificair.com instead of cebupacific.com
Their first argument is that the phrase ‘Cebu Pacific’ gets 5 times as many searches in Google as ‘Cebu Pacific Air’. This is correct, based on Google Trends, however it’s a completely irrelevant point since cebupacificair.com ranks first for ‘cebupacific’, ‘cebu pacific’ and ‘cebu pacific air’, so they’re certainly not loosing any search engine traffic based on their choice of domain name.
Their next argument is based on the assumption that 15% of visitors out there would be type-in traffic, meaning that the visitors are simply typing what they believe to be the correct domain into the address bar of their browser. While I agree there might be a reasonable level of NEW users who type ‘cebupacific.com’ into their browsers address bar, I would wonder if it’s really as high as 15% and I’d argue that they’re not loosing those visitors. People aren’t going to visit the wrong domain and then just give up on it, they’ll go to a search engine like Google and search for the correct address.
For many Filipinos, Cebu Pacific is the only airline they’ll ever fly due to the competitive pricing and brand awareness. I really don’t believe that visitors who land on the wrong website would simply give up and look elsewhere, especially considering the lack of choices.
And the annoying thing about the whole case review? They talk as though Cebu Pacific purposely left Cebupacific.com and Cebupacific.ph when in fact they were simply too slow to register them before professional domainers. What I’m actually amazed at is that Cebu Pacific haven’t gone through the proper processes to claim these domains which are quite clearly using their trademark.
