Airlines Should Monitor Google Trends

(MoneyWatch)  In case you've been living in a cave this week, the Pacific Northwest is now under about 100 million feet of snow. Many, many flights were canceled, and there are a lot of stranded people around the country. As you can imagine, plenty of people are interested in knowing what's going on, and airlines can do a better job of reaching them.

If you've never used Google Trends before, here's a page to bookmark. Google's top 100 current searches can be found on their site. They also have them archived, so take a look at December 22's hottest searches. On that page, you'll see "seatac airport delays" at #14, "portland airport" at #54, "pdx" at #69, "pdx airport" at #72, and "spaghetti cat" at #92. Ok, maybe that last one isn't so relevant.

Any airline severely impacted by this storm (I'm looking at you, Alaska) should make sure they have websites up with as much information as possible. On that site, these terms should be used to make sure that people who are searching for them can easily find what they need.