by Donald Wood
Last updated: 10:11 AM ET, Wed March 10, 2021
Google recently announced changes to how the website manages hotel booking links, including eliminating listing fees for hotels, online travel agencies and other booking sites.
The search engine has added an organic list that allows travel companies to get visibility for free, provides more extensive booking options and potentially makes Google a more competitive player in the metasearch space.
Travelers can search Google for accommodations in a specific destination and then click on a particular hotel, where there will now be two organic results in addition to up to four ad slots. The website previously only showed paid hotel booking links ranked by an advertiser bidding model.
When travelers click on the "prices" tab, it will display up to four ads, plus an unlimited number of organic, free booking links from eligible partners. Google says any hotel or travel company is eligible to participate via its Hotel Center account.
To ensure the pricing information on the organic results is accurate, Google utilizes a similar combination of technological and operational solutions it used for several years to ensure rates displayed in paid ads are valid.
"There is a little more complexity to this given that when you have somebody who is paying for a product, an advertising product, there is an incentive to make sure that that data is correct," Google vice president Richard Holden told PhocusWire.
"So you may hear some nervousness in the industry about 'Is it harder to police this in an organic space?'" Holden continued. "I think that that's valid. It is harder to police and this is what we've been spending time over the last couple of quarters working on this product to make sure we have the tools and processes in place to monitor that."
Along with price accuracy, Google acknowledged that organic links would be ranked based on an algorithm that considers prices, click-through rates and landing page experience. The website said, "commercial relationships, advertising and payment to Google are not considered at all."
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