A Brief Guide to Google Carousel for Hotels
The Google Carousel, which is the black strip of images that may show up at the top of a location-based Google search result, was introduced last year and has made a significant impact on hoteliers. The Carousel is Google’s way of helping users sort through an array of choices when searching for businesses in a specific location. If you wanted to find a hotel in Chatham, MA for instance and did a search for “hotels in chatham, ma”, then this would trigger the Carousel.
The results in the Carousel are based on the hotel’s Google+ page, so it’s important that these are properly optimized. Read our guide to Google+ for more info! Whether or not a hotel is shown in the Carousel largely depends on the number of reviews. The more reviews, the higher the likelihood that a hotel will show up.
A user can scroll through the available options in the Carousel by simply clicking left or right arrows. It’s important to note that when a user clicks on an item in the Carousel, it initiates another search for that specific hotel, like so:
This is a very important aspect for hotels since this presents users with a number of options. For instance, a user could click on an OTA ad for a hotel. The Google Carousel is another reason why hotels should capture the most search share possible with some great PPC and SEO. It’s also important to note that the Carousel will remain at the top, allowing the user to click on other hotels, which would initiate a search for that particular hotel.
Read our Guide to Google+ to find out how you can make sure your hotel shows up in the Google Carousel.
Interested in Getting on the Google Carousel?
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