New Google test shows hotel reviews grouped by traveler type & categories

Google tests hotel reviews summarized by categories: rooms, location and service & facilities and traveler types -- couples, families, solo and business travelers.

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Google Stars Reviews Rankings6 Ss 1920

Google is now testing a new method of displaying local reviews for the hotel industry by grouping and summarizing reviews by traveler type and category of service. Sergey Alakov first noticed this test, and he captured many screen shots of the Google local reviews test.

I’ll summarize the big changes that I think really stand out.

Google local reviews are broken out here by traveler type, including couples, families, solo and business travelers. Here is a screen shot showing the reviews summary grouped by those types:

Google Local Reviews Travler Type

If you click into one, it will then show you the summary by category of service, such as rooms, location and service and facilities. This is all with a graphical user interface that has nice imagery and icons:

Google Local Reviews Travler Type Detail

In addition, at the top level, you can also summarize by categories including rooms, location and service and facilities:

Google Local Reviews Category

Google shows you the top reviews in each category as well:

Google Local Reviews Summary Cats

Sergey has more screen shots on his blog, but this is one of the more extreme user interface tests I’ve seen in local in a while.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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