Previously, a traveler may have found a hotel website but had to pull up reviews and prices in separate searches, often on sites like Expedia or Travelocity.

After the recent changes, a traveler will stay on Google much longer since they now link to Google reviews, but still easily link to Tripadvisor or Travelpod reviews.

Travel websites can still receive some of this traffic since Google now offers ads that are placed on top of the link to the owner site. If done smartly, this seems like a win-win for Google and the travel websites.

- Google can drive more qualified paid search traffic to travel websites since showing the room rate pre-qualifies travelers to a degree. If someone doesn’t want to spend $250, they won’t click on the ad showing that rate.

- Travel websites should not show ads when they don’t have inventory for a particular hotel. Otherwise they’d spend money on pulling a traveler they can’t convert.

At some point in time the gains will not justify the costs for the big search engines to continue taking away the “middle men” as someone above noted.

Overall I think there is a trade-off between quantity of information and quality of information. This goes to the heart of the Yelp argument regarding Google’s use of reviews and is the underlying argument found in the first comment above regarding the value of Facebook.

For a real world example; we are traveling to Portland this weekend and are in search of a good nightclub. I first went to Google and found a bunch of garbage results that even included Exotic Clubs. I then went to Yelp and found much more useful results. Quantity and speed versus quality and time.

Trustworthy advice and information is what most people want, and the type of search that delivers that, will ultimately be the type of search that wins out.

The early promise of local search was that it could have at least some of the facts right (the location or address). It did not take long for the general search sites to lose control of that.

I believe that search, as we have put up with it, will change until it becomes useful, honest and accountable. People want information and advice they can trust. What ever search company finally gets that, and puts some order and reliability to their search results will win out. I’m waiting to see what company has the courage and fore site to do it correctly. That will be the big search winner.

My research indicates that when someone is going to buy something at a local shop they are more likely to ask friends offline and check out reviews BEFORE they check with their friends on facebook…. that could be age dependent and could very well change over time. But for now, Google delivers.

I think Facebook has an opportunity to have explosive growth in this arena. It would take some steps, but my simple anecdotal review of a number of extraordinarily high quality reviews suggests that for the best advice on where to shop, what to buy, and where to eat nothing beats facebook for reviews and high quality information.

Every so often as I scroll through my facebook page I find the absolutely best reviews and comments directed to those whom I follow. They ask about a certain local service or restaurant or product and their friends jump in with detailed explicit suggestions. These are quality comments from people whom they trust. They beat anonymous reviews from people you don’t know. The reviews can include tremendous depth and detail and allow for back and forth questions.

Facebook is an incredible source for soliciting help and suggestions from those you know. Search engines can’t match it…..YET.

Google and Bing are both taking shots at it. Google has just rolled out Google+ which, if its growth approximates facebook can offer all those qualities. Bing actually shows what your facebook friends think of different websites in its results.

Both are taking stabs at this…but for the time being nothing approximates facebook for this unbelievable depth, and quality….AND ITS NOT EVEN A REVIEW SITE!!!!!!

This anecdotal experience has little to do with those hard facts and stats presented above…but if I wanted in depth advice I’d use the model in facebook to solicit comments from those I know. Its a great example.