Shall I use "holiday" or "vacation"?

I need some advice from native speakers

[rubenski]

Hi everyone,

I am writing a web site on a small region of a country in Europe. I wonder if I should use the word "name.of.region holiday" or "name.of.region vacation" as my main key phrase.

I have searched Google and '... holiday' yields 20% more results than '... vacation'. So I think my competetion prefers holiday instead of vacation.

What do you think about this? Vacation sounds better to me, but the word holiday might be used more often. How would you charaterize these two words on a errrr 'subjective' level? Would you say one of the two is more sophisticated for example?

I know the words have the same meaning, but I just want to know which one you prefer and why. And how would you describe the difference between the two words, if any?

[bcolflesh]

All the Euro-folks I know say "holiday" - probably couldn't hurt to target both...

[sem4u]

Use the Overture suggestion tool and Wordtracker to see which is searched for the most. You probably will be able to work both into the copy anyway.

Vacation does sound more sophisticated though.

[Receptional Andy]

In the UK vacation is very rarely used. It's all about holidays over here ;)

[rubenski]

The Overture search term tool was down just minutes ago, but it works again.

579569 vacation
171222 holiday
1994 regionname vacation
133 regioname holiday

These results clearly point to the use of 'vacation', but I don't really trust this tool. I know from experience that the results aren't that reliable.

Are there more people here that feel vacation sounds more sophiticated? What do you think is used most by people from the United States? And which one is more popular in the UK?

In the UK vacation is very rarely used. It's all about holidays over here ;)

Ah, so for the UK I should choose holiday. What about the US?

[sem4u]

Were those results from using the UK or the US tool? You might want to try both.

As Receptional says we mostly just 'holiday' in the UK :)

[bcolflesh]

What about the US?

I say vacation.

[creative craig]

I have worked on a site that deals with these exact same keyword variations. Holiday is a Euro phrase and vacation is an American phrase.

[rubenski]

Results were from the US tool.

For the people around here that prefer to use holiday:
You can use holidays (plurar) and holiday if you are talking about one vacation right? :P (Or shall I just start a quiz site for linguists).

Any more Americans that would like to comment on this?

[rubenski]

I have worked on a site that deals with these exact same keyword variations. Holiday is a Euro phrase and vacation is an American phrase.

I see. Well, that pretty much answers my entire question. Thanks! Now to decide which group to target first. But I'll decide that on my holiday vacation. I'm going there tomorrow!

These are the results for the UK tool:

579383 holiday
9997 vacation
23 regionname vacation
326 regionname holiday

Indeed clearly in favor of holiday

[Receptional Andy]

>>You can use holidays (plurar) and holiday if you are talking about one vacation right?

The plural usage is slightly curious - someone might say that they are 'on holiday' but equally they could be 'going on their holidays'. As you suggest, the plural doesn't always indicate that there's more than one 'vacation' ;)

[drbrain]

In my corner of the US, "holiday" refers exclusively to government no-work days. Examples would be 4th of July, Christmass and New Years Day.

"Vacation" is something your employer allows you to take when you see fit. (You earn vacation time, then take a vacation from work.) Many americans take "vacation" around a holiday in order to have a longer "vacation".

"Vacation" is the UK/Euro equivalent of "holiday".

[Alternative Future]

I targeted vacations then a mix between holidays and vacations then put full focus into holidays and found most traffic from the latter holidays - I also get my fair share of traffic from the states also.

[rubenski]

Hm, that is quite interesting. At this point I am really starting to wonder (again) how reliable the Overture search term tool is. Not very I would think.

I'll stick to vacation. One has to make choices and vacation sounds better than holiday to my Dutch ears.

I will put up a page that is targetted at "regionname holiday" once my site is indexed in the search engines, just to see if that yields any new traffic.

Thanks

[PhraSEOlogy]

I have heard people from new england call it a holiday - a throwback to the old colonial days I suspect.