On the cusp of the summer travel season, AdGooroo has taken a look at the state of paid search in the travel sector in the U.S. The company has found that, on the whole, paid search expenditures have been trending down since 2011. Spend fell 19% from January through April of this year compared to last year. That follows an 11% drop during the same period from 2012 to 2011. The downward trends hold through the summer months. AdGooroo suspects the decline in ad spend since 2011 is due in large part to the launches of Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder that year. The actual number o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Flight Search | Google: Travel Search | Stats: Search Behavior

Don't want your content to be included in many of Google's vertical search services, such as Google Shopping or Google+ Local? Google's got a new tool for that, a result of its agreement earlier this year with the US Federal Trade Commission over anti-trust charges. Announced on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the new tool is located within Google Webmaster Central and allows publishers to keep their content out of: Google Shopping Google+ Local Google Flights Google Hotels Google Advisor (financial product search) Oddly, several of these services only allow you to be inc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Advisor | Google: Antitrust | Google: Flight Search | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Place Pages | Google: Product Search | Google: SEO | Google: Travel Search | Google: Webmaster Central | Top News

Following its acquisition of travel software provider ITA, Google's flight and hotel search products have offered isolated useful features but have largely failed to live up to Google's promise of "innovation." Consumers have mostly failed to notice Google's travel innovations so far as well. There are now indications that Google's travel sites and content are becoming more integrated into something more interesting and useful for travelers and not simply "me-too" products -- as they mostly have been to date. A Google blog post today provides a review of recent upgrades to Google Fligh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Google Now | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Google: Travel Search | Google: Web Search | Top News

Google is testing a new ad format on its Hotel Finder product that lets marketers bid to appear at the top of search results. Promoted Hotels ads are ranked based on a combination of bid and quality score, and are sold on a CPC basis. News of the experiment was first reported on Tnooz. The ads -- one or two per results page -- show at the top of search results with a shaded background, and have a small "Ad" indicator on the top right of the rectangle. The ad itself contains the same information as an organic result -- user ratings, the star rating (4-star, 3-star, etc.), the per-night price [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Travel Search

Before Google was formally approved to buy travel software company ITA, the company argued that the acquisition would result in "innovation" for travelers and travel search users. Beyond the appearance of flight times/routes in search results we haven't seen much "innovation" yet. Google's new "find hotels by travel time" experiment is, however, an example of how Google might deliver new functionality and shake things up in the intensely competitive yet paradoxically complacent travel segment. There are travel verticals that will allow users to look for hotels near landmarks or filter by di [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Travel Search

Several major hotel chains have launched what might be described as "Hulu for hotels," a new travel search site called Roomkey. According to Tnooz, the consortium includes Choice Hotels, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham Hotels. Starwood, operator of Sheraton and W hotels, is not among them. Hotels have been struggling for years to get consumers to come directly to them rather than various OTAs, middlemen and aggregators to whom they pay affiliate booking and lead fees. This is not the first such hotels joint venture effort. There have been several initiatives over t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Travel Search | Search Engines: Travel Search Engines

Bing's not-so-newest push into online travel hasn't begun to roil the industry, the latest example of where if Bing does something, no one cares, but if Google does it, it's time for a Wall Street Journal story examining the potential evilness of the move. In case you missed it, the Wall Street Journal has a story out about how Google's travel results -- added in September, rather than December as the story says, have upset (as you'd expect) rival travel search engines such as Kayak, Expedia and Orbitz. Bing: Pushing Travel Search Against Google Since 2009 You have to get midway down int [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features: Analysis | Google: Antitrust | Google: Critics | Google: Flight Search | Google: Travel Search | Microsoft: Bing Travel | Search Engines: Travel Search Engines | Top News