“Butting” by TripAdvisor and Google due to hotel reviews continues

    TripAdvisor and Google butting over hotel reviews continuesHotel reviews were the reason for the conflict between Google and TripAdvisor, which has been going on for more than a month, and each side has enough supporters and opponents. Steve King (Steve King), an expert at SIM Partners, understood the essence of the contention.

    TripAdvisor has long remained, if not the only, then, without a doubt, the most authoritative resource that provided travelers with objective information about the conditions of accommodation and the quality of services in hotels around the world. Every day TripAdvisor pages are filled with hundreds of hotel reviews. For many, it was these reviews, not photos from the official websites of hotels, that were the decisive factor that influenced the choice. It is not surprising, therefore, that over time, hotel owners began to show concern about the large number of negative reviews for which, they believed, there was no reason. Their fears were confirmed to one degree or another - as an effective tool for influencing consumer choice, TripAdvisor turned into a weapon of competition over time: competitors placed negative reviews on each other.

    However, with the advent of Google Places, the situation only became more complicated: at the moment, TripAdvisor is trying to block the placement of reviews from its pages in Google Places. Among the main reasons for such actions are selectivity in posting reviews and an attempt to manipulate the opinions of users in order to gain a competitive advantage with Google. Google objects, arguing that its Google Places search engine only simplifies the search process for the user. Now you can still find TripAdvisor reviews on Google Places, Google only redirects users who want to read such reviews to other sites. In some cases, TripAdvisor user reviews are not directly posted to Google, but through regional sites in the UK, India and other countries. In other cases, Google hosts second generation content, that is, material from sites combining on their pages links to original reviews from TripAdvisor, CitySearch and Yelp - for example, Epictrip, Travel.USnews.com and Residio. Note that historically, Google posted on its pages original reviews of hotels from sites, thus creating unique content, and eliminating the possibility of duplicate reviews. Using aggregator sites is an obvious rejection of this practice.

    Consider the implications of the method used by Google for users and hoteliers. First of all, there is the possibility of a biased increase / decrease in the rating of a hotel, when the same review, posted on different resources, as well as links to it, are considered as separate reviews. So, a simple search for the Royal Palm hotel in Miami through Google.com gives 702 user reviews:

    a search of the Royal Palm hotel in Miami through Google.com gives 702 user reviews

    whereas a search for the same hotel through Google Maps shows 4114 reviews:

    Miami Royal Palm hotel search via Google Maps showing 4114 reviews

    If you look at the reviews in detail:

    hotel reviews

    You may notice that they were taken from the British and Irish TripAdvisor sites, as well as from the Travelpod resource, which publishes TripAdvisor user reviews on its pages. Thus, a single hotel review posted by a TripAdvisor user can theoretically be counted at least three times, thereby multiplying the total number of reviews and increasing the rating on Google Maps. For Google rating, the total number of reviews is important, and hoteliers can simply achieve hotel rating upgrades by posting reviews on as many sites that publish such information as possible. Hotels can post links to their own sites, and thereby also increase their ranking on Google. In any case, it is obvious that Google’s algorithm for calculating hotel ratings makes placing hotel reviews profitable for hoteliers, and,

    Modern travelers rarely trust one site, and try to look at several resources before deciding in favor of a particular hotel, but even such tactics do not guarantee them objectivity.

    Source: blog.oktogo.ru with reference to toons.com

    Also popular now: