Several weeks ago, Google announced it would test changes to the search results for hotels in order to see how the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe would impact hotels. Well, that test is wrapped and the results were not good for hotels, says Google.
Google tested changes for the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe to try to help airlines, hotel operators, and small retailers and not just "large online travel aggregators and comparison sites" the search company said. Googles specifically tested removing map features from hotel listings as part of this.
The results were posted yesterday and were not good, according to Google. Google wrote:
- People were measurably less satisfied with their search results and it took them longer to find hotels, including by having to do more searches. More people also gave up and did not find what they were looking for.
- Overall, traffic to hotels and intermediary sites went down.
- Hotels lost the most traffic (more than 10%), affecting hundreds of thousands of European hotels.
- Traffic to intermediary sites largely stayed flat.
Google said, "Based on the negative impacts we’ve already seen, we’ve stopped the test."
Forum discussion continued at Google Webmaster Help.
