UpTake, a travel search engine that specializes in helping users find travel ideas by taking a semantic approach to indexing destination descriptions and user comments across the Web, announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding.
The funding round was led by Trinity Ventures, which ostensibly believes UpTake has a bright future ahead of it. An initial look at the site’s stat shows that it is growing at a decent clip, but still very small.
According to comScore data, the site had 150,000 unique U.S. visitors in August, which was slightly below its July performance. CEO Yen Lee explains that the slowdown in August was likely due to the site’s switch from its previous name, Kango, and notes that traffic has been growing 30 percent every month. More than 90 percent of that comes from organic search and SEO. He says:
Our business model works because we can be found where 73% of consumers start their travel research – in web search.
Considering it’s competing in a well-trodden space where sites like TripConnect and TripHub have failed, it’ll be interesting to see if the travel search engine can transition from an SEO-driven strategy to a more natural uptake.
Congrats to the uptake team! It’s nice to see continued investments in the travel space.
a great idea to make money…keep going
A very good concept, should integrate with popular search sites - expedia, hotwire etc. to provide information depending on destination.
Congrats to Yen and team! Nice to see the long tail semantic search approach working, it’s a tough problem to solve…
Recently used Uptake to find a place in Carmel and was really impressed with the way they pulled/organized the information against my search criteria. It saved me a ton of time. Keep going and growing.
Great idea - I guess it gets better with use.
Top response for kid-friendly “things to do” in NYC is a Spa Day at a resort.
Man, my kids really love those facial scrubs!
About half of the other results are not too bad, though, and it doesn’t rely on me inviting 20 friends in order to be of use.
I could see trying this eventually, although outside of the US. There are lots and lots of resources for US cities - try finding a kid-friendly restaurant in a European city.
Congrats Yen and team - keep up the good work.
Adam
I loved how I could find family hotels and activities with little work. I was looking in Monterey and I don’t think I would have considered most of the hotels and motels they recommended. And they made it easier to assess those hotel choices. I also found a playground that looks like it’s worth a visit. Nice job.
Uptake rocks! Congrats on the team for landing series B.
Congrats to the team - I know some of the marketing team and they’re top notch and expect nothing but success from them.
Congrats Elliot and the rest of the team! We need more services to filter through the massive amount of information on the web.
Congratulations Yen, Gene, and rest of the Uptake team!
congrats Yen & team! whew - especially in today’s environment. fantastic job & best wishes.