Hotel Local Listings Greatly Varying With Date
-
Searching for accommodation in a local region brings up a local listing block (e.g. http://puu.sh/irEoJ/635140594d.png). When clicking through to the block and changing dates, the order of the listings vary greatly. See attachments for 4 samples.
How is Google deciding to order these listing blocks?
I initially speculated they are pulling availability rates from Online Travel Agents like Expedia or Booking.com, but doubt this to be the case given a lot of those listings do not have Google Hotel Ads and smaller operators do not have their distribution system hooked up to Google Hotel.
tVX816P,8U6RbcP,N6xGEdx,YC4K344#0 tVX816P,8U6RbcP,N6xGEdx,YC4K344#1 tVX816P,8U6RbcP,N6xGEdx,YC4K344#2 tVX816P,8U6RbcP,N6xGEdx,YC4K344#3
-
Hi Fastrack!
That's very interesting - sounds, then, like there has been a change. Maybe what you were seeing was Google testing something? Thanks for updating this thread with your observation.
-
The search results are not varying AT ALL now.
-
Hey There,
I'm just sorry I didn't have more knowledge to share on this topic. I wish I had 4-5 hotel clients I could begin tracking in this regard. One thing I did wonder is, apart from price, could availability have something to do with this? For example, as a given hotel approaches booked status, could it be falling in rank, while hotels still in need of bookings move up, guaranteeing more transactions? Another idea would be deals or specials for given dates. Could these increase rank for a given date ... even based on user behavior like click-thrus, temporarily boosting rank? I think a test would need to define variables like this to begin drawing any conclusions. It would be great if someone with a good handful of hotel clients could do a study.
-
Thanks for you reply Miriam.
That SEJ piece emphasized what I already knew about local listings with a mention of pricing. The rest is just info about Google Hotel Finder.
Pricing is the only variable I can think of that would explain variances in date selection, but this ignores listings with no price. It seems most changes come from the different date range rather than date.
-
Hi Fastrack!
I'm sorry your good question hasn't received a reply yet. Unfortunately, I've never marketed a hotel and so am lacking education on this topic. Your screenshots are very interesting. This is Google's own Help Doc, but unsurprisingly, it does not explain rankings:
https://support.google.com/hotelfinder/?hl=en
This SEJ article from 2013 suggests some possible factors you might want to take a glance at, but as it's a bit old, I'm not sure how current the info is:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-hotel-finder-war-hotel-serp-listings/67152/
Here's a beginner's guide that is more complete and more recent:
http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/a-hotels-guide-to-google-hotel-finder/
Honestly, it's interesting to me that there seem to be few studies about what influences rank in this Google feature. I'm not finding a ton that is recent or conclusive. An enterprising Local SEO firm that manages numerous hotels should really do a study on this. So sorry not to have better info for you - there doesn't seem to be a lot out there. I'm hoping if anyone in the community has hands-on experience with this industry, they can shed some further light.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Incorporated Business Listings
Hey Community! My agency has been working with more companies that are Incorporated lately who are requiring SEO assistance. A few of our customers have their business listed to include the Business Name, Inc. in the Google/Facebook listing and some of them don't. What would you guys recommend we go with when dealing with an incorporated business? One of the businesses we're working with is Blossom Childcare and Learning Center, Inc. Thanks
Local Listings | | Advancify
-Kris0 -
Brand listed as plumber, can we still rank for other markets?
We have a lead generation website in the Netherlands in the plumber business. The last two years we were focussing on local SEO, and gain some rankings on keywords like 'plumber amsterdam'. We also connected google my local business in different city's, so we rank in both the citations as in maps. Now we want to get some rankings with the lead generation brand on other keywords. Keywords for other markets like 'handyman' 'roofer' etc. Google remembers what kind of business we are, since we are listed as plumbing company. My question is, can we still go for those other markets with the brand? The markets/ keywords are related and all in the home improvement segment. So for example, example.com/plumber example.com/roofer etc. The other option is to target those specific markets with other brands/ domains.
Local Listings | | remkoallertz0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Best Practice When Selling One Location of Company with Multiple Branches - Local Search
I have a client with a small business with 4 different branches. Currently, we have a main landing page for the company, plus distinct landing pages for each branch with maps, territories, distinct phone numbers, etc., for each branch. The company recently sold one of the branches to a competitor as they do not want to service that area anymore. They have asked me what they should do now. Obviously, we are going to remove the location page for that branch, but we also need to transfer the phone number to the other company for use as part of the sale. What tasks should I look into for separating the branch from the rest of the company while still maintaining best practice for the rest of the site/company? Thank you for your help and suggestions.
Local Listings | | Ayres-SEO0 -
Local SEO and Sites by Order of Opinion?
Okay, so we were just having a discussion about which sites/directories are the most important to be listed in for Local SEO. Ultimately we were looking to 'sort' these by order of importance for the typical local business. Google My Business Yelp Yahoo! Local Bing Local Foursquare YellowPages.com SuperPages.com CitySearch HotFrog How would you order them? Would you add anything to the list? Thanks!
Local Listings | | ClickMonsterIM1 -
Yext & Moz Local - Avoiding Dupliates
What happens if we are using Yext and Moz Local at the same time? I hear it can create duplicates. However if the NAP is exactly the same on both, why cant the aggregators/citation sources figure this out on their own? I need to develop a clearer understanding before i start submitting a select few of my clients through Yext. I do have the option to opt out of the Factual aggregator on Yext. Instead we would only update the sites that Yext has access to. End of day we are going to continue using Moz.com/local but yext saves us dozens of man hours while trying to clean up citations and fix duplicates (temporarily ofcourse until we contact them ourselves).
Local Listings | | waqid0 -
Nitpicky NAPS Local Question
I'm about to setup all our NAPS for our Tampa office with Moz Local, and I'm curious about one small thing: suite vs ste? I have read that what matters most is consistency, but since I haven't set it up yet, if anyone had any experience with full names being written out doing better/worse than abbreviations? Thanks, Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Local Listings SEO: Which multi-location retailers are doing a super job with local listings? I'm also interested in finding retailers who are using schema.org microdata format to structure their store-level data.
Do you know of any enterprise level restaurant or retail chains that are doing a great job with their local listings content? Just looking for some links/examples of best practice executions. Also, I'm very interested in finding retailers or other multi-location businesses that are using schema.org microdata format to structure their local store location data.
Local Listings | | SeeMore2