Last week it appeared that hotels reviews site TripAdvisor was blocking Google from showing its content on Places Pages. TripAdvisor never confirmed that it was doing so and Google attributed the absence of TripAdvisor reviews on Places to a technical problem.

However what you might call “circumstance evidence,” as well as comments made by TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer to the Wall Street Journal this weekend, seem to confirm the site’s displeasure with Google:

“Google does seem to be chasing us and I don’t like it one bit,” said Mr. Kaufer, adding that he has been negotiating with Google for about two months to try to improve his situation.

TripAdvisor is part of the coalition of travel sites opposing the ITA acquisition as well.

Mike Blumenthal noticed this weekend (and so did I) that TripAdvisor was now back among the review sources on Google Places Pages. A search for “Four Seasons San Francisco” last week showed that TripAdvisor content was missing:

Today on that same page TripAdvisor content has returned:

This dance of ambivalence is likely to continue as key local and vertical content publishers try to maximize traffic from Google without providing too much to render unnecessary visits to their sites. Yelp went through a version of this and appeared to resolve its differences with Google. Now TripAdvisor seems to have done the same. Who’s next?

Postscript: TripAdvisor Watch argues that this resolution of the apparent dispute is not in fact a resolution and that TripAdivsor has merely been unsuccessful blocking Google at every turn:

[S]ome TripAdvisor reviews have persisted throughout the dispute, indicating that TA’s attempted block has not been 100% effective – Google has continued to scrape a number of reviews throughout.

Related Topics: Google: Critics | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Partnerships

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

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http://tripadvisorwatch.wordpress.com/ Phil

TripAdvisor is not back in Google Places. It is only available for certain properties, and this has been the case ever since December 4th. Throughout, TA has failed to prevent Google scraping some of its review content. I have already pointed this out to Mike when he announce the return of TA reviews. If you search for “london hotels” on Places you’ll find only 2 have TA reviews – this has been the case for some days.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=london+hotels&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&biw=1280&bih=817&prmd=ivmc&source=lnms&tbs=plcs:1&ei=0EQHTcSOO8SLhQf8mJnuBw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CB4Q_AU

Phil

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