SEMphonic, a web analytics and search engine marketing (SEM) technology firm, announced findings that reported travel aggregators rate higher than major U.S. airlines when it comes to SEM.

The ratings were based on highest pay-per-click (PPC).

The top five travel aggregators were ranked in the following order: Orbitz, Expedia, CheapTickets, Travelocity and Priceline.

SEMphonic generated a list of top search terms in the travel industry. Sample terms include: Travel Planning, Travel, Online Air Travel, Book Travel Online and Travel Deals. The organic and paid performance results were then tracked across the entire spectrum of relevant words.

Rankings are based on word relevancy and organic/paid positions on Google and Yahoo!

"For way too long this industry has been plagued by laborious and complex technologies to get at real facts. Technology should be ubiquitous. The true calling of an SEM practitioner is to be able to minimize the amount of time gathering relevant data and focus on taking immediate action. Smart marketers now have a rapid way to look at competing web sites and really focus on differentiating their product and service offerings," says John Williams, chief marketing officer, SEMphonic.