Just a few weeks ago, Google began testing a new hotel pricing and availability graph. This new feature shows average pricing for hotels when users carry out a branded hotel search on Google via desktop.
Below, you can see an example of this price and room availability graph for hotel-specific searches. It’s positioned directly above the first organic search result (which is typically where you would see a hotel’s official website) and provides a simple at-a-glance overview of room rates.
If this turns into a permanent feature, travel shoppers looking for a hotel may focus on Google’s price chart rather than clicking on a hotel’s own website. It’s certainly possible that hotels could then begin to see a decrease in organic traffic.
The rise of Google in travel
After heavily pushing Google Flights in the past few months, the company now seems intent on expanding its share of the hotel booking market. This follows a busy few years in which it’s released new products, including Book on Google, Destinations on Google and Google Trips, while also growing itself as a hotel review platform and launching Google Q&A.
In the past few weeks alone, Google has made a lot of changes to its hotel and travel search results. The Search Engine Round Table website has observed a host of updates, including a compact new design and layout for hotel search results.
Here’s a screenshot of the design, featured on the Search Engine Round Table website:
Google also tested a tool called “price insights“, which was first spotted by Sergey Alakov. This feature lets users know if they’re getting a good deal at a particular hotel. This is the box that shows when Google finds a better deal:
The front screen of the “Price Insights” section then shows similar nearby hotels offering a better deal:
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