TripAdvisor Tells Google Places to Go Take a Hike

As Google creates a thin review layer to displace some of the directories they are driving into bankruptcy, some of the wiser middle men are telling Google to go get stuffed. TripAdvisor reviews disappeared from Google Place pages due to a technical issue, but then they stayed disappeared due to TripAdvisor passing on Google's generous offer to borrow their content & use it to replace them in the search ecosystem:

Google is no longer able to stream in reviews from TripAdvisor to Places pages after the user review giant blocked it.

TripAdvisor confirmed the move today in an email, stating that while it continues to evaluate recent changes to Google Places it believes the user does not benefit with the “experience of selecting the right hotel”.

“As a result, we have currently limited TripAdvisor content available on those pages,” an official says.

As Google spreads into a B2C player & tries to offer up suggestions for everything the top market leaders in many big markets (like Yelp & TripAdvisor) will tell them to screw off. However, players 2 through x will be desperate enough for exposure that they are driven by short term thinking. Google's ebook news mentioned that software is in place to do bundled deals to sell hard copies with the electronic versions. And just look at the direct to consumer marketing Google is doing in Japan.

Eventually market leaders will be offered concessions for deals, or Google will partner with lower placed businesses to slowly wear down the advantage of market leaders with a slow water torture treatment. But for now TripAdvisor stands on its own.

The positive news for Google in this is that the search results offer a wide range of excellent hiking boots for Googlers to choose from :D

Published: December 9, 2010 by Aaron Wall in google internet

Comments

tom888
December 9, 2010 - 4:54am

Maybe not related, but I noticed Google changed text by ads from 'Sponsored links' to 'Ad'/'Ads' - wonder why they did it, if they were enforced to do it.

December 9, 2010 - 6:38am

Shorter disclaimer = less consumer awareness = more ad clicks.

Patrick
December 9, 2010 - 5:05am

thanks for making my day, AaronLOL

Will.Spencer
December 9, 2010 - 11:11am

My rankings in Google are constantly getting better, and driving less traffic.

Eventually organic rankings will drive so little traffic that it may make more business sense to move content back into walled gardens which are monetized via subscriptions.

And how will we advertise our walled gardens? With Google Adwords, of course!

December 9, 2010 - 6:26pm

Hi Will
I think at some point Google sees that trend as coming. This is part of the reasons they are rushing to create tons of official media relationships to where they can be the DRM-powered gatekeeper over a lot of categories. That has a few major benefits to Google

  • it keeps some leading content accessible
  • builds another revenue stream for Google
  • establishes a financial relationship that keeps those businesses reliant on Google
  • lets Google collect additional data for building out further business layers
  • lets Google own part of the customer sign up process so Google can charge recurring fees AND cross-sell
bookworm.seo
December 9, 2010 - 5:41pm

"The positive news for Google in this is that the search results offer a wide range of excellent hiking boots for Googlers to choose from :D"

haha love it :D

JohnRobbins
December 9, 2010 - 10:53pm

I so....glad we can still get the boots :-)
JohnRobbins

December 14, 2010 - 3:48am

TripAdvisor reviews are back on Google. Of course we do not know if TripAdvisor got free AdWords credits, higher payouts, or any other guarantees...but Google is increasingly moving to back door deals & other gray market moves to appease select partners while others are kept in the dark.

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