Starting today, we are seeing organic listings serve for all auctions on Google Hotel Ads. This was previously tested by Google over the past few months but appears to be rolled out for all users and search queries. This new interface reduces the number of paid listings down to four links and introduces a new “organic” section below the meta links. These organic listings are free.

With this update, the top four spots will likely become more competitive as that section drives most of the volume. However, the organic listing section creates opportunities for many suppliers/OTAs to participate and stay visible without committing large budgets, although the volume could be limited. Similar to what we have seen in paid search, brands that are visible in both paid and organic links will typically see a bigger share of traffic and bookings.

What Does it Take to Participate?

Participating in the organic listings for hotels is a more involved process compared to traditional SEO. Here are the key requirements to have organic listings in hotel ads:

• Be live on Google Hotel Ads
• Have the hotel appropriately matched from hotel inventory
• Have a rate available for the property and itinerary
• Have any bid set for the property in Google Ads

Advertisers that are currently live on Google will place in this new organic listing with minimal intervention. For advertisers that are not presently live on Google, it’s important to work with a rates and availability partner and a bid management partner to ensure appropriate coverage and performance reporting. The sort order of these organic listings is based on the combination of price, quality score, audience, etc. so ensuring appropriate price accuracy will be critical to the success of this new listing.

Clicks on organic links are tracked separately from their paid counterparts. Unlike the paid links, the level of auction and query information available is significantly reduced. The reporting for organic clicks is available in the Hotel Ads Center (instead of the Google Ads UI) and gives insight into the hotel that was clicked and the date of the click. And Google will also support tracking to differentiate bookings from organic listings vs paid listings.

Working with a bid management system like Koddi will allow you to easily see your organic vs paid activity and how each contributes to your campaign’s performance. If you have questions and want to learn more, contact us here. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest metasearch news.