Hotel Local Listings Greatly Varying With Date

[fastrack]

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

[MiriamEllis]

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.

[fastrack]

The search results are not varying AT ALL now.

[MiriamEllis]

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.

[fastrack]

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.

[MiriamEllis]

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.