Mediarun Search Marketing News

Google’s New Hotel Finder

By Matthew Kynaston

August 2nd 2011

Search Engine Optimisation News

Over the weekend Google launched their new experimental hotel search tool. The tool allows users to find the best hotel using the following instant filters:

Location – Utilising Google maps and including a new Shapes feature which allows you to mark out on a map the area in which you’d want to stay in. It also included a Popular Location feature where you can clearly see prospective hotels are in relation to famous local landmarks.
Dates – A simple calendar tool.
Price – A sliding scale to manage how much users would be happy to spend. It includes a new feature for bargain hunters whereby the user can compare the hotels price on the selected dates to its typical price over the year.
Class and Rating – Similarly to Hotels.com, users can narrow their searches down by Star Ratings but also by average users rating.

Also when finding a hotel the user may want to consider, they can add that hotel to a shortlist so they can easily refer back to it.

So what’s new?

The tools and user experience are actually nothing original. If users have used the likes of hotels.com, most of these features are already there, on its hotel search tool.

In fact, in my opinion, Hotels.com actually offers far more variables and filters where a user really can find their ideal hotel. Criteria features include the like of: features and facilities, accessibility features, hotel themes etc. Hotels.com even uses instant results dependent on the changing variables.

So why use Google?

For Google the benefit is to have users and hotels to be even more dependent on the web-giant. For users they now have another micro-search engine to go to when searching for hotels rather than typing “hotels in...”. It also means that on one site they can read reviews quickly, look at the pictures of the hotel and then manage their booking.

For hotels it is an opportunity to achieve visibility cost effectively in Google. Many hotel websites are dominated by Java Script and Flash making them difficult to be read by the search engine bots. It also means that if a user decided to book that particular hotel they have a clear option to go directly to the hotel’s site.

Google also have fitted AdWords to be part of the booking tab options. As an experimental project at the moment, one would wonder if there will be room for PPC optimisation specifically for these ads, rather than just placing a competitor domain and price.

In conclusion, I predict this service is here to stay. It is another example of Google’s growing complete service of taxonomy and search vertical development. Google will likely poach other popular search markets and who knows there may well be a Google Insurance one day with a similar format.

Whatever happens I do hope this is the end of the less than useful red blotches/ battleships/ zombie apocalypse that has long been a feature of Google Search.

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