"I am not one to be controversial but I wanted to let you know my thoughts on some things that have been happening with good old Google recently.
There have been some major changes in the way Google ranks websites within its index and it’s fair to say there has been a definite loss of confidence in the travel market due to these changes, a sector in which Google has made some inroads in recent years, indicating the travel market as being a key vertical for them.
Many people in the industry have been arguing recently that the new search system is inaccurate and unpredictable. It’s not just the travel sector either; many in the search marketing community have been up in arms about the changes.
The Panda Update as it is known was designed to reduce the amount of spam and content built purely for the benefit of the search engines. The aim is to reward the highest quality websites and mark down those sites that are considered to be content farms. When Google first launched the Panda update it completely wiped out about 12% of the rankings – which is massive anyway but considering how websites are often interconnected, it had a really big impact. Google then spent a month or so improving the Panda update, but it’s still not quite right.
What’s worse is that Google has also said that the Panda update isn’t like other parts of their algorithm in that it’s a separate entity that’s designed to tidy up the rankings and it’s run on an “every now and then basis” whereas its other algorithm factors run at the same time. If Google run the factors every month then you can safely assume that it could be weeks before you know the impact of some of the SEO work you’ve been doing. This approach just isn’t cutting edge enough – when the rest of the world is going real-time Google seem to be taking a backward step!
The biggest problem is that the effects of this update are unpredictable (because they happen on an ad hoc basis) and they aren’t massively accurate. We have been publishing content on our sites for years (news and events from around the area) to provide more information for our customers, not to rank on the search engines. In our line of business it’s essential that you give visitors a good idea of what’s happening locally.
I’ve been at quite a few travel events since the update and as soon as I start talking about Google this update comes up over and over again. People in the travel industry just aren’t happy about it – as much as anything they seem to feel targeted by Google, which is especially sad as Google has suggested this is one of their key markets for future development.
There has been a move towards social media since its inception around 6/7 years ago and this is something we’re likely to see more of in the coming weeks. Experian’s Internet Research Division Hitwise recently estimated that around 10% of all internet visitors are arriving at websites from Facebook - roughly 14% of all traffic received from websites is from a social media site – this is an increasing trend and something that we in the travel industry ignore at our peril.
The way we consume media on the world wide web is changing and Google is starting to look antiquated both in terms of the mode of our consumption but also in the way it moves its model further from its founding values to greater commercialism.
As more and more people use social media channels it becomes more important and it has never been more apparent in the area of travel and especially youth travel, where individuals often use social media sites to plan their travels in conjunction with their contacts.
Google needs to be very careful about making these kinds of changes and alienating a significant chunk of the market, especially one that targets the audience of its biggest rival.
I hope this doesn’t come across as waffle but the whole team who work on web and SEO at umi Hotels have been scratching our heads in regards what was going on, and I wanted to share our thoughts. If you have any ideas please let me know as the more we work together in the industry, the more we will be able to understand it all".
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