A recent study reveals that travel companies should be worried about how Google is displaying search results but there are ways around it
During the opening panel at the recent EyeforTravel Europe show, attendees were asked: what is the biggest threat to the industry right now? Needless to say, one of the possible boxes to tick was the role of Google, along with the rise of the disloyal customer, an ever-merging market, and the march of the machines. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly for some, the threat of Google was the least of delegates’ worries.
This certainly baffled keynoter Rod Cuthbert, chairman of Rome2Rio and the former founder of Viator, who said: “With Google’s hotel product, they are now allowing hotels to advertise directly, and if a consumer chooses a particular property they can pay using Google Pay. So now they are [also] getting payment data, and they are at the top of funnel”.
Cuthbert’s hope is that the European Commission, which has been preoccupied with Google’s anticompetitive behaviour in retail, will soon turn its attention to the travel industry.
A different view, however, came from Eurail CEO Brenda van Leeuwen who argued for the “need to play smart”. And that may well mean partnering with Google, and others like Skyscanner and Expedia, to put the rail industry on the map.
It might not be fair, but travel firms do need to keep on top of Google’s moves in search. So, if Google announces, as it did earlier this year, that sites which “follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing” will see significantly better results, then brands need to be on the ball.
They also need to know how search results are being displayed, and according to the results of recent travel sector specific research from Searchmetrics this has changed and will continue to do so. For example, Google used to show 10 organic blue links on the first page, but that is now down to 8.8 on both mobile and desktop. Increasingly too, the first page is dominated by eye-catching Knowledge Graphs (a Google tool which neatly boxes up information drawn from a range of services), images, mobile apps and maps, which lead to higher click-throughs from travel searchers.
There five key findings from the Searchmetrics research and here are some top tips:
