With the new version launch in January, we added a few tweaks to the system to try to help more of these odd search results come up more often. We are early in the process of reaping the benefits of those tweaks (some semantic tweaks to the html code and also some house secrets) but I can share a few of the interesting and surprising top search terms that we have hit so far.

This is my top 10 list with the obvious terms, such as “KLM” and “Flightclub”, removed. Because most of the results are Japanese search terms I am also including a rough translation in brackets after the word where appropriate.

Here we go :

1. グラスゴ 地図 (Glasgow map) … this was one of the first unexpected keywords to get. We started getting results on this even before we had any articles on Glasgow.
2. サンタマリアノッベラ (Santa Maria Novella) … Italian perfume also gets a lot of attention.
3. シェパーズパイ (Shepard’s Pie) … everyone loves food, looks like this popular English dish is high on the list for many.
4. レオニダス チョコ (Leonidas Chocolate) … this top Belgian chocolate brand, must be high on the shopping lists for Japanese travellers.
5. ロンドン gallery (London gallery) … we were very happy to start getting good results here. London galleries are great and it is a very competitive search term.
6. アムステルダム ムール貝 (Amsterdam mussels) … the first Dutch entry in the list, but mussels?
7. キールナ (Kiruna) … searches for the town of Kiruna in Sweden seem to be focused on the Ice Hotel that the town is famous for.
8. コルソコモ (Corso Como) … The Italian brand, Corso Como, from Milan proved popular early on.
9. デュッセルドルフ 匠 (Düsseldorf workman) … ok, that is a kind of simple translation, but the search gets you this Japanese noodle shop in Düsseldorf. Who’d have thunk it.
10. ランゲン 美術館 (Langen art gallery) … This is the second German entry and another tip of the hat to the art world.

That completes the list.

We have learned a lot already but looking at the results and numbers, but one of our main goals, getting a good spread of coverage in Europe, was achieved very well. The results are really all over Europe. A few trends to notice… fashion and food seem to be the most popular and that trend goes through to the posts on the site as well. Art is also well represented.

Next I try to follow up with a post about my favorite posts from Flightclub. There have been some great ones so far, so I hope to share them with you soon.

We were very proud of the site we released last year, but we kept wanting to get in there and make it even better. Eventually KLM gave us a little budget to go back and develop what is actually quite a substantial upgrade. It ended up taking a lot more hours than originally planned due to us getting the taste for improvements.

First thing you will notice is that the look is completely new. The great new design by Jerome, who joined the team recently. He refined the look and made the site a lot cleaner and easy to navigate as well as just getting it looking damn fine.

We have also made some serious updates to the backend underlying the site, and lead programmer, Alban, has been working tirelessly to set up a great structure and refine many of the things learned in the first build.

Other key updates

• Country level navigation
• Complete restructure of all the forms
• Extra fields in the writing pages for location name, address/info, URL
• Expansion of social features, such as friend feeds and comment feeds
• RSS feeds available on just about any content search

The site is currently only in Japanese, but if you tell KLM you really want it in other languages they might give us a budget to fast-track the multilingual roll-out.

Check out Flightclub V2 and enjoy!