In previous articles, we have analysed the 6 levels of the metasearch funnel and delved into the variables that determine the data of each funnel step or level.
NB: This is an article from mirai, one of our Expert Partners
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We have discussed these points generically, always referring to paid Google Hotel Ads. But what about Google’s free booking links? Do they have their own funnel? How can we view the data related to free booking links?
Furthermore, we will discuss in detail where data referring to paid campaigns or free booking links can currently be consulted on Google platforms.
Since Google’s free booking links appeared in 2021, a new free (organic) placement has been added below paid ads.
So what is the free booking links funnel like?
Google’s free booking links, being a totally free environment for the user, lacks the same support as the Google Hotels payment ecosystem and therefore, there is much less information available.
Of the top three levels of the funnel: opportunities, participated opportunities and eligible impressions, there is no information available from Google. This starts to be visible in 2 of the bottom 3 levels of the funnel: impressions and clicks.
Even without information, we estimate that the first level of the funnel, that of opportunities, should be the same or very similar in paid ads and in free booking links in terms of searches by hotel name or brand.
A user simply searches for your hotel on Google for a certain itinerary and cannot search for it by differentiating the type of campaign they want to see since, in this way, the opportunities and demand would be the same for the paid and free environment.
So, the opportunities, as well as the participation rate, should be similar for both placements, since the latter rate depends on mostly technical variables specific to connectivity partners, which should be the same at the hotel level, not of their paid or free campaigns.
Participated Opportunities and Eligible Impressions are exclusive to the payment channel. They are related to the possibility of entering the auction and the effective entry into the auction of the advertiser, concepts which correspond 100% to paid ads.
There is no information on how the free booking links “auctions” work, and they should not really be called that, since in this case no bidding is involved but there is a Google algorithm that decides the ranking of the “ads” of this placement, whose variables are not public.
It is then, from the fourth level of the funnel, that of Impressions, where both environments can be visualised separately with real data provided by Google. In the case of free booking links impressions, Google rounds the data to protect the privacy of the user of the free system.
For paid ads, the number of impressions is accurate. At this level, the hotel’s official website can appear in paid ads and free links at the same time, or in one or the other placement, each with its own ranking results.
The fifth level: that of clicks, is very similar to the previous one, with separate data available via Google, with the difference that in this case, the click data fromfree booking links is also accurate, without rounding.
With the previous two levels you can calculate the CTR, also available on Google platforms.
Finally, at the conversion level, Google only provides conversion data from paid campaigns. Free booking links conversion data is not available from Google, only some connectivity partners record and offer this data to their customers.
