What I noticed vis a vis branded searches is that the pictures from the Places page add a tremendous amount of “verticalness” to the information from the site. That absolutely eats up enormous amounts of visible computer screen real estate. Essentially above the fold on one’s computer screen means that one is seeing one piece of information for one business and no other information.

Good or not? Positive or negative? I guess its all in the eyes of the businesses/smbs/hotels that show up in results. If one is first its a feast!!! An incredible bonanza. If one is 2nd or god forbid 3rd in the SERPs its as if one is banished to limbo.

If the branded search is accurate and entirely representative of a single entity that might be fine. If the so called branded search is one that might encompass more than one business….say because one smb/one business dominates serps for that phrase even if its not the business name than it presents a problem IMHO.

If Google offered hotels a way to successfully disintermediate the OTA sites at a lower cost, the hotels would bend over backwards to give G any and all information any way they wanted it.

As hotels.com proves, there are lots of useful facets that people already use to characterize hotels, such as neighborhood (less flexible than draggable boundaries but easier to specify), accomodation type (1 star vs. 5 starts doesn’t help me distinguish a B&B — which could be luxury — from a corporate hotel), amenties (pool? jacuzzi?), etc. In general, it’s hard to obtain this kind of faceted metadata for the open web. And sometimes it’s hard to organize it in a fashion that is intelligible to consumers. But hotels and restaurants are ideal domains for a rich faceted search experience. By being so spartan, Google is almost reducing the hotel selection problem to price, location, and availability. I’m sure that’s good enough for many, but it is a lost opportunity for those who have any other selection criteria.

1) How would you suggest that they embrace the faceted “paradigm in all of its glory”?

2)No it isn’t hotels.com or TA… part of that though is marketing and positioning of the product… both big struggles in the past for G… think they can overcome their hesitancy in those arenas?

Thanks for the observations… I did not notice the absence of review content if not current… good catch.