Screen Pilot Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Keep Tabs on Your Online Reputation with Google Alerts

Lisa Courchesne — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 08:09:03 -0000

Does Google Alerts really work for picking up reviews (good or bad) written in directory listings across the web? Does this work for Facebook reviews as well ?

Re: TripAdvisor.com: Do Their Business Listings Have Any SEO Value?

Catania Roma — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 16:42:33 -0000

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Re: Screen Pilot Finds New Home Across From Union Station

Chris G. — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:47:05 -0000

Very cool - I can't wait to see the new digs. It can only be fitting for a great agency to have a great interior space to match!

Re: Google Plus Local Gets A Facelift

Matt — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 08:29:07 -0000

I had to look around Vail for a while. You'd be surprised how many large hotels/ resorts haven't claimed and worked on their pages yet.

Re: Google Plus Local Gets A Facelift

Tom Dibble — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 19:22:55 -0000

You picked a nice place to illustrate this Matt!

Re: Google Plus & Adwords Shared Endorsements

Matt — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 08:15:20 -0000

Quick update to this story... Some users are protesting this move by Google. It will be interesting to see how they respond over the coming weeks. I'm sure they expected some kind of a backlash.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/t...

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Matt — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 11:23:25 -0000

@hivesusan @Tom Dibble in some ways yes that is correct. If you have a Google+ connection that has either +1'd or follows one of the results then it is likely that the result will have a boost and move up the carousel to a higher position. So a greater amount of activity, follows and +1's on your G+ page should equal more visibility when users see personalized results - in theory.

The exact impact of that is almost impossible to gauge unfortunately because you aren't able to see whether every visitor has a connection to someone on your G+ page.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

hivesusan — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 16:22:02 -0000

I can't pretend to be an expert on this, so take my question at face value! :) Does the carousel create opportunity for hotels that are actively using Google +? I've heard that suggested elsewhere and wonder what you think?

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Durant Imboden — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:32:10 -0000

To me, it just looks like more visual clutter. Searching for hotels from a list of names or photos isn't very useful in any case. It's like throwing a dart at a local map.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Tom Dibble — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:57:55 -0000

You could always VPN in through a US server - it's not 100% presented at the minute but frequency is increasing.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Paul — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:44:33 -0000

Thanks for the reply Tom.

It really is too bad that I cannot see the results for myself, but to me it would seem that all previous local listing have a better placement now then they did before. Almost twice as many listings (depending on screen size), meaning more chance for individual hotels to be listed, they all have top-of-the-screen ranking placement and an eye-catching image begging to be clicked. IMO judging from all screenshots, this cannot be any better for the local hotels or real businesses. But indeed there needs to be an option for businesses to select which image to use, this is pretty crucial I would say.

I actually am a (very small) OTA and even though I think that many, many people will click on the images and not even see/click the rest, I am hopefully optimistic about higher-on-page listings of the organic results. But it is just as likely that I am too optimistic about this...

Of course it depends on which business you are in and we cannot say much about where and what the searchers will click until we have more data, but so far, to me, it looks good for both local businesses as they have the best top-of-the-screen placing and good for organic listings as they are pushed up higher on the screen as well.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Tom Dibble — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:29:06 -0000

Thanks John_PopeXIII! Yeah - this isn't a 'pretty' move at all at face value. My comment above to Paul was that they've created a slither of opportunity for true local businesses by moving their vertical placements to horizontal placements and it's too early to tell the impact of this. But we've already seen an impact on referred organic traffic for a couple of leading markets in the US and for previously very well positioned clients within them as local pack results. I hope this isn't the sign of things to come in the coming weeks.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Tom Dibble — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:20:18 -0000

I think part of the problem is Paul is that the local pack assisted true businesses (in this case hotels) with presence on page one for very competitive terms. Sure they are still there in the carousel (for now), but we're unsure at this very early stage what effect this new presentation will have on which elements still receive the bounty of traffic.

Will the carousel integration affect traffic flows for the top 3 results from the traditional local pack. What would be interesting would be to see eye tracking on how users interact with this. Especially with the addition of imagery from the graph.

So, for now the organics in this sector below the carousel are; PPC > HotelFinder > Online Travel Agents basically. In terms of garnering vertical real-estate, that's been wiped out overnight for the Hoteliers that enjoyed high traffic placement on page one for highly competitive market terms. This isn't a positive move for those who don't funnel millions of dollars into Google annually like the OTAs do via PPC and HotelFinder engagements.

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

Paul — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:08:45 -0000

I cannot see the results myself as I am not in the US and don't have a US proxy at the moment, but it might not be all that bad for organic listings.

What I normally saw is between 1 and at the most 3 organic results before the local 7-pack was displayed. Meaning that organic listings starting from 2-3-4 actually were +7 results lower. With the top carousel replacing the 7-pack, those organic 2-3-4 listings are now supposedly higher up on the page.

Again, this is what it looks like to me, purely based on the screenshots as I cannot see the new results yet.

Does this seem to be true or not?

Re: Hotels & Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. The Impact.

John_PopeXIII — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:42:47 -0000

Great analysis, ScreenPilot.

Principal takeaway, "Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a fair game in that sandpit, it’s a knife fight."

To the hotel industry, Google has fully declared its intentions - "the man (hotel) with the deepest pockets wins." No more - er, never has been the case really - will the most relevant result for the user/traveler be presented to the user in the search (or Carousel) results; this is all about who pays Google the most for the lead/click.

Sad really, that the global "benchmark" for search experience is really just "a knife fight" - has nobody - either the traveler or hotelier - figured out yet that Google is one of the worst experiences out there? For the hotelier, horrific return on investment or Adwords spend - never mind additional cost to manage the process - and for the traveler, terribly irrelevant search results, meaning the search experience doesn't provide the most appropriate results quickly and efficiently to the user, they'll still have to troll through the Carousel beyond the highest bidders in order to find the most appropriate hotel for them. A standard "old school" OTA experience is far superior than this Carousel monstrosity.

It appears Google's simply relying on their massive advantage in the "first port of call" (search) for users to start their product discovery journey, and continued ignorance by users/travelers in falsely believing Google presents the best results for their needs - they certainly don't. Shocking really.

As Jeff Bezos says, "Your margin is my opportunity."

To me, this is just Google hammering the nails in their own coffin.

High ho, high ho it's off to work I go... :)

Re: Google AdWords Image Extensions Are Here!

Tom Dibble — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:21:26 -0000

Better image of Image Extension actually in play.

Re: Google AdWords Image Extensions Are Here!

Tom Dibble — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:37:11 -0000

It will indeed push down the organic results further Phillip. It's an interesting concept and I think for some verticals that are image conscious / sensitive for marketing purposes (hotels, resorts, FMCG, clothing etc etc) it could be a good addition to campaign. We're of course not allowed to say a great deal about the Beta and there are some (quite appropriate) restrictions to the imagery being allowed into this initial run of testing - but we do think it will be a benefit and hoping it will stick around long term.

Re: Google AdWords Image Extensions Are Here!

Philipp Schade — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:16:34 -0000

And might pushing organic results further down to nowhere.

Re: Google AdWords Communication Extensions

Tom Dibble — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:29:31 -0000

| "Please note none of the males here are a fan of UGG boots".

Er... Guilty as charged!

Re: Keep Tabs on Your Online Reputation with Google Alerts

screenpilot — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:14:57 -0000

Thanks for reading our blog! We're glad to hear you enjoyed it and learned something new.

Re: Keep Tabs on Your Online Reputation with Google Alerts

Chiburci — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:09:21 -0000

Too cool. Had never heard of it, thanks!

Re: Google Hotel Finder is Here to Stay

Digital Marketing — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:38:20 -0000

COOL! !!!!. Thanks for sharing very interesting.

Re: Google Hotel Finder is Here to Stay

screenpilot — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:29:30 -0000

Hi Matt,
I would say it's difficult to predict whether hotels and resort will eventually get to include their own prices and links to their booking engines. I believe the delay is political as it provides a prominent place for the OTAs to rank and Google to partner with these companies that it already has a relationship with rather than developing a whole new platform for hotels to include their own links and offers within the Hotel Finder. Thanks for the great questions.

Re: Google Hotel Finder is Here to Stay

Matt Chantry — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:53:46 -0000

What do you think the chances are Google eventually allows hotels and resorts to include their own prices and links to their booking engine on the Hotel Finder tool. Is the delay on it a technical or a political (i.e. the OTA's don't want that to happen) issue?

Re: An Introduction To Multi Channel Analytics For Hotels & Resorts

Matt Chantry — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:55:14 -0000

Completely agree John. But creating that initial awareness is the most vital part of the journey and multi-channel allows you to gauge which specific sources are the most value for creating that awareness.