Comments on: Big G vs. The Trip Advisor – Smackdown Continues in The Review Ring

By: Google Hotel Finder Experiment – A Peak at the Future of Local Search as Interactive Content | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:35:30 +0000

[...] be in a more competitive position going forward as they compete more directly against the likes of TripAdvisor and [...]

By: Phil At TripAdvisorWatch

Phil At TripAdvisorWatch — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:27:09 +0000

Got you now, Mike – if I scroll down the full listing then TravelPod does indeed appear for the link you gave. Unfortunately I was looking at the ‘details’ near the top of the Places listing, where travelpost and other review sites are listed, but not TravelPod. Sorry about that.

I see now that for some hotels and inns on Places, the TA reviews appear under the guise of both Travelpod and TripAdvisor, others have neither, and our own only has TA itself. What larks!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:42:46 +0000

@FF

You are right it is similar but I think you will find that it is taking place in a bigger context…. Google buying ITA could very well disintermediate the likes of Expedia (owner of TA) around airfares and the inclusion a booking tool in Places could affect both of them

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:35:30 +0000

@Phil

I meant TravelPod. I check 21 hotels in 3 different cities and while both were showing up widely, TravelPod had the most reviews, often the same as reviews as TA.

By: Phil At TripAdvisorWatch

Phil At TripAdvisorWatch — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:18:26 +0000

Mike

Did you really mean travelpod.com (the blogging site) was the winner in this spat? Or did you mean the hotel booking/review site travelpost.com? The latter is the first “review” site shown on Google Places in the link you posted.

I confess I’d never heard of either of them before.

Phil

By: FF

FF — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:36:04 +0000

I feel like this is just a different iteration of all the drama that occurred when news sites where upset about being aggregated in Google News. In the end, it turned out that for most news sites being aggregated in Google provided more traffic to their pages than not.

I think if TripAdvisor is confident in their content and their brand they’ll likely find the same thing. Not only that, but starting a tiff with the 800 pound gorilla of search just seems like a bad plan altogether. What do they really hope to accomplish by making their content exclusive?

Things change and sometimes it’s better to work with that change than against it.