Specialist cruise travel agent Iglu.com and operator Royal Caribbean are leading the way in terms of profile on Google according to the latest sector analysis from Greenlight.

The search agency analysed the 2.2 million cruise-related queries on the leading search engine, finding that brand queries were by far the most popular, accounting for 59%.

‘Royal Caribbean’, the world’s second largest operator behind the owner of UK market leader P&O Cruises’ parent Carnival Corporation, accounted for 6% of searches.

The line was also the most visible advertiser for paid search on Google.

Iglu topped the ranking for natural results and also Greenlight’s integrated search league table for natural and paid search combined having gained 67% share of voice in the former.

The 12 month view of search in the cruise showed November dip following a five month period when search volumes remained fairly static at around 2.5 million queries.

A significant spike in March saw the sector leap to 3.3 million from a low of 1.5 million in February following a period of declining volumes.

While brand searches accounted for 59% of the overall total, destination related searches were 12%, generic 14% and cruise ships 15%.

In the natural search table Iglu beat cruise.co.uk and Thomas Cook into second and third place respectively, with Wikipedia and P&O Cruises making up the top 5.

Key word ‘Royal Caribbean’ was queried 135,00 times, 10% of all brand-related queries, and the UK version of review site Cruise Critic claimed 61% share of voice by ranking for 1,469 keywords.

Viva Voyage, Planet Cruise (which was bought by Iglu this year), cruisedeals.co.uk and Iglu made up the top five most visible paid advertisers.

Royal Caribbean ships also fared well in the analysis, Independence of the Seas, which has sailed out of Southampton during the summer for the last six years.

This keyword was queried 18,100 times accounting for 5% of all cruise liner-related searches.

Analysis of destination-related searches found the ‘Caribbean cruises’, the world’s second largest destination for cruise behind Europe, accounted for 9% of searches.

‘Mediterranean cruises’ and ‘cruises from Southampton’ accounted for 5% and 3% of destination-related queries.

Of the 420 generic cruise keywords analysed ‘cruises’ accounted for 19% ‘last minute cruises 6% and ‘river cruises’ 5%.

Greenlight also assesses brand’s profile on social media. For cruise Youtube and Wikipedia claimed to the two top spots with Klout scores of 99 and 97 respectively.

They were followed by Thomas Cook, Thomson, Celebrity Cruises and P&O Cruises.