With fresh eruptions coming from Icelandic volcanoes this week, people have been searching online for the latest updates on the ash cloud to see if their travel arrangements will be disrupted.

Looking at the downstream industries receiving traffic from ash cloud related search terms on 24 May 2011, the majority of the traffic was being sent to news and media websites, with travel, entertainment and social networks also receiving traffic from these searches.

Online attentions were also turning to transport websites and the Met Office, with Internet users interested in flight cancellations and the disruptions caused by the ash cloud.

Interestingly, visits to the Transport category, which contains airline and airport authority websites spiked on Tuesday 24 May, two days after volcano Grimsvotn erupted. Visits to the Weather category, including sites like the Met Office spiked on Thursday 26 May after the worst of the ash cloud eruption was over. When the eruption was at its zenith, fliers were checking with airlines and airports to see if flights would be grounded, but as the ash receded, visits started going to the weather sites to check for status updates on future eruptions.
Searches around the ash cloud were at their most prolific on 24 May when the primary concern was whether flights would be able to depart. You can see from the search term variations chart below how quickly search behaviour changed, with just 5 unique search term variations containing the words ‘ash cloud’ being typed into Google, Bing and Yahoo! on Saturday 21 May but 1,570 variations being used by 24 May.

What we learned from last year’s ash cloud disruption is that Twitter is a fantastic resource to quickly reach out to consumers with updates on which flights and airports were affected by the ash cloud. British Airways in particular managed its customer expectations brilliantly last year with regular updates on Twitter about the flights that were delayed or cancelled. Crucially, the company also decided to stop posting any deals or marketing messages during this time which might have irritated customers looking for flight information.
You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.