By Daniel Edward Craig
The online travel space is evolving at a dizzying speed, and nowhere have changes been more significant than at Google. In the past few months Google has introduced the “+1” button to rival Facebook’s “like”, has launched the Google+ social network, and has removed third-party reviews from Places pages. For hotels it has added rates and availability to Google Maps and Places listings and has introduced Hotel Finder, it’s answer to Kayak, as an “experiment” in the U.S.
What does this mean for hospitality and tourism businesses? As Google becomes more social, more mobile and more focused on user-generated content, Google Places is evolving as a linchpin of your online presence. It’s time to whip your listing into shape and to make it an integral part of your online reputation management program.
Optimizing your Google Places listing means ensuring content is complete, accurate and kept up to date. Your efforts will help travel shoppers find you and will help you convert them into paying guests. All content on Places is either controlled or influenced by you: description, categories, additional details, special offers, imagery and reviews. There is no cost and it can easily be done in-house.
Google provides detailed instructions (see links below), so rather than rehash them I’ll highlight a few key areas. For guidance I consulted with Laurian Clemence, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs with Google UK. Examples are geared toward hotels but relevant to all types of hospitality and tourism businesses.
Basic Information
“By having an online presence via Google Places, hotels are enabling users to find and interact with their business,” says Clemence. He recommends keeping listings simple, accurate and consistent.
To enhance searchability, ensure that your business’s name, address and phone number are listed in a consistent format across the web. The Company/Organization field acts as the title of your listing and should include the word “Hotel” and your destination if they are part of your official business name—Google doesn’t permit descriptors or keywords in titles. For example, “The Manderley Chicago Hotel” is more searchable than “The Manderley”.
Your property description is limited to 200 characters, little more than a tweet, so get right to the point and populate it with rich, relevant keywords.
Says Clemence, “We recommend that separate listings [be] created if the restaurant, lounge or spa within a hotel has its own name and telephone number, separate from that of the hotel. An individual website is not a requirement.”
Categories and Additional Details
You can choose up to five categories. At least one must be standard; the rest can be customized. Google recommends being as specific as possible, as it will automatically determine the generic category as well. For example, if you enter “Boutique Hotel” Google will know that you are also a hotel.
In the Additional Details section Clemence recommends hotels include “any additional information that would be helpful to potential customers as long as it’s specific and factual. Examples could be specific awards the hotel has won or a unique URL that leads to a menu for the hotel restaurant. The purpose is to help the user find all of the details about your business that might be useful to them.”
Imagery and Map
Businesses can upload a maximum of 10 photos and five videos, so make sure they are high quality, authentic and functional. Adding captions and descriptions is presently not an option, but I’ll be surprised if that doesn’t change soon.
Recently, Google made the “Upload a photo” button more prominent, so expect to see more photos submitted by users in the coming months. If a photo is falsely attributed to your property, click the “report inappropriate photo” button.
Make sure that the marker on your map is in the correct position, as people use a variety of Google products to find your location: Maps, Street View, Satellite View, Driving Directions and Hotel Finder.
Offers, Updates and Analytics
Adding offers and updates to your listing is free and can be a great way to keep content fresh, engage visitors and convert. To add an offer click the Offers tab on your dashboard. It will appear on your Places page and Google Maps listing. To share news, events or packages click the “Share an update” link.
Google now features room rates and availability data on Places, Maps and Hotel Finder but restricts access to a limited number of online travel agencies, GDS providers and brands with sizeable inventories across multiple markets. For the rest, only a link to the brand website is provided. This is a deterrent to direct bookings, so let’s hope Google opens it up to independent properties soon. For now ask your GDS provider if it is working with Google.
The dashboard provides basic analytics to track activity on your page: impressions, actions and search queries.
Reviews
With the recent removal of third-party reviews from Places listings and the addition of a more prominent “Write a review” button, Google has embarked on a campaign to stockpile reviews from its own users. At present Places reviews have limited usefulness to travelers in comparison to sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp. Only a handful of reviews is listed for many properties, little information is provided about the reviewer, and content can’t be sorted according to what’s important to the traveler.
But with the introduction of new products like Google+ and Hotel Finder and the integration of previously disjointed products, monitoring, soliciting and responding to Google user reviews is fast becoming a critical part of your online reputation management program.
We already know the many benefits of traveler reviews to search visibility and conversions. Says Clemence, “Engaging with the reviewers can be a good way to get to know your customers and what they think about your business. Business owner responses allow you to build relationships with customers, but keep in mind that the responses are also public.”
Presently reviews are not monitored by Google. If you're concerned about the accuracy of a review, Clemence recommends clicking the “Flag as inappropriate” link to submit a report. “If we find that the review is in violation of our Google Maps policies,” he says, “we'll take the appropriate action since we aren't always able to remove or be certain of violations.”
What’s next?
Says Clemence, "We’ll continue adding features to Google Places to make it even easier for users to rate, discover and share places with friends and family whenever they’re using Google.”
Google, already a dominant force in travel marketing, has reared its head as a formidable force in social networking. By optimizing your Places listing now you’ll be positioned to take advantage of new opportunities down the road.
For more information:
Google Places help for business owners: Create a great listing and How to respond to reviews.
Google Lat Long Blog: Business listing titles, Business types and Adding useful descriptions and relevant categories
See also How to optimize your TripAdvisor listing and Help with Yelp for Hotels.
Great article Daniel! I just wonder if Google's bias toward their own users is a good or bad thing for this new curation? Also, I have heard others complain about the fact that Google does not allow rate information on this site. What do you think? Thanks. Kyle.
Hi Kyle, I think that remains to be seen. Right now Google Places reviews don’t offer anything approaching critical mass and functionality is limited, so they’re not terribly helpful to travelers, at least not compared to sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp. I suspect Google is setting the framework for future changes that will integrate its products, increase user-generated content and feature more functionality and more info about reviewers. If Google+ takes off we’ll be able to see the profiles of reviewers who are active, which will lend more credibility to reviews and also allow users to see reviews of people within our circles. Similar to the Facebook Connect/TripAdvisor application. Without a doubt search is becoming increasingly personalized. As for your comment about rate, I’m assuming you mean the current practice of Places & Maps listing OTA rates but only links to brand.com, not rates. Currently the system is disadvantageous to hotels who want direct bookings and biased toward OTAs. Let’s hope Google levels the playing field soon.
It may be great when it works, but our Places listing has been suspended for weeks and although I have read their Quality Guidelines several times, I have no idea why. They say that a review is pending but who knows when.
If they are going to have such power in the future then we should at least be given proper channels for redress when things go wrong. They cannot be allowed to damage peoples reputations without explanation.
I am totally exasperated with Google!
Will be interested to hear the outcome, Martin. Good luck!
Hi Daniel.
Great and informative article here. You for sure need to have your Google Webaster Tools in order these days. And like Martin indicates here you really need to be aware of their TOS.
After they launched Google+ a lot of high profiled networkers has flocked to Google. This can be both a good and a bad thing. Since most interaction today is live people tend to jump and follow the early adapters. Google did like Martin experience put some businesses on probation, and their reason is still unknown.
So at the moment I tell my Hotel Friends to hang in there and let some of the experienced Social Media Networkers learn how Googles Network is evolving. When they launch their business platform then it is much better to get involved with Google+.
Might have to look into to Google Guide. Google Places is really of great value for Hotels, and then to incorporate it with a Google Profile. This will most definitive help Hotels with their SEO.
And one of the reason I say hang on with Google is that we have learned from previous projects that they wanted to have some presence in the Social Network market, but they failed.
And Bing is really reminding me about LinkedIn, they are taking a must slower approach. And their business portal is really great. We are on the path to some really great, but if we rush this can come back and bite us.
Cheers…
Are Morch
Hotel Advisor and Social Media Strategist
Hi Are, It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Google+ is open for business profiles. If it takes off businesses will need to build and manage a Google+ listing too – or perhaps it will displace Google Places listings. For now I’m hearing from a lot of people who have a personal profile on Google+ that as much as they like it they’re not thrilled about administering yet another profile. I suspect the sentiment will be similar with businesses. So the questions is, will we abandon Facebook and migrate to Google+, stay on Facebook, or manage both? Only time will tell.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwYnKNxz4k
I hate the stupid chintzy bravado at the beginning, but his awareness of top sites, and content generation, makes a very simple, very compelling argument against Facebook, and completely around the fact that Google has a HUGE leg up.
Hey Michael, thanks for sharing the video, interesting viewpoint. I can buy the conclusion he makes, but not necessarily the rationale. Facebook reached critical mass because it’s inherently user-focused and social, not commercial. So is Google+ (after several misfire attempts at social by Google). Google+ will rival Facebook because it’s integrated with other Google products. Google dominates the search market, and search on Facebook is still mostly ineffectual. Many businesses will feel they can’t afford not to have a Google+ profile (that is when Google permits business profiles). For now Google+ is just another social platform to manage, with a few cool new features. For a lot of people it will be either/or. Google offers a lot of compelling reasons for businesses to migrate (or manage both platforms), but users? Only time will whether Google+ will reach critical mass.
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I managed a portfolio of close to 50 Google Places pages and it is nor easy. The validation process is a real pain. Management cannot be delegated or shared.
I would like Google Places to be integrated into the Google Plus Entity pages soon.
That would certainly be a +.
You’re right, Marc, it definitely would be a +. Google Places has great potential but needs to be way more user- and business-owner-friendly. Given the rapid pace of change we’re seeing at Google, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see some serious improvements in that regard soon. All tied in with the Google+ network, of course. Once businesses can have profiles, I think that will be the real game-changer. You’re managing 50 pages? If you’ve got examples of some well optimized pages in the hotel/travel industry I’d love to see them.
Interesting post and interesting debate about the future of Google + in a business context. Look forward to hearing your views then!
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