on 16 October 2009 
(No Ratings Yet)When considering an online travel startup you tend to think about three approaches:
- taking on an incumbent at their own game, but executing better
- creating a whole new category that you can dominate, as long as you can make that category desirable (no point dominating a category that no one is interested in)
- assume that the market must be massive so if you can only capture 1% you will be fine
All three approaches require consideration of barriers to entry. If you are startup up you have to consider what barriers competitors or incumbents have put in place – e.g. do they have a bigger consumer brand, do they have more data, do they have mature technology partnerships with lock out clauses etc.
If you are the company that is currently in a dominant position you look at the equation the other way around. On every project you look to make it harder and harder for new entrants to come and take a piece of your pie.
Hence a great deal of an entrepreneur’s time is taken by active consideration of building or bypassing barriers to entry.
So, take TripAdvisor’s primary barrier to entry.
TripAdvisor has a mammoth website (approx 60 million pages in the Google index featuring 25 million reviews). That is a significant barrier to entry for any new review based travel startup.
You would have thought with such a grip on the review market as TripAdvisor has that they don’t need too much help to maintain their position. However it now comes to light that Google are assisting TripAdvisor to maintain the status quo.
The Google Adsense API is only available to websites with over 100,000 daily page views. Whilst this doesn’t sound a particularly high number it does mean that the API is only available to the top few thousand websites. Startups need not apply (and will have to be content using Google Adsense via the omnipresent JavaScript widget).
But what is the Google Adsense API and how does it affect all this?
The Google Adense API permits API consumers to return an HTML snippet of Google advertising (Adwords) that can be manipulated prior to serving onto the final browser consumer. It can also be stored for later analysis.
e.g. this advert box on TripAdvisor comes from Google Adsense API:
Unfortunately, when this text is displayed as in page content it also appears on Google search results. Here you can see TripAdvisor ranking higher than Viator, but with the two TripAdvisor results using Viator advert text:
You can see the Viator advert text appearing as part of the TripAdvisor results.
Viator have blogged about their reaction to uncovering this problem.
So are we all happy that TripAdvisor has access to this API from Google but other startups don’t? Is there a real benefit here or are people overreacting? What do we think about text from adverts being used as snippets within the main search results?
- Daniele Beccari (VP Isango, a Viator competitor) tweeted from a personal standpoint: “I stand with Viator against TripAdvisor”
- Scott McNeely (director: consumer & affiliate web at Viator) called it “highly annoying and, at the extreme, not the Internet we signed up for”
Me, I think TripAdvisor are being astute in how they use the Google Adsense API and business is business. However I do consider it unhelpful that Viator’s advertising text should appear in the snippet shown on the Google main search results as if it were TripAdvisor’s text. Google should address this in order to keep their advertisers happy.
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So I’ve been thinking more about this problem, and here are two refinements of my “annoyance” mentioned above.
First, if Google is NOT using the Viator PPC copy to influence the natural rankings of TripAdvisor, then I am unhappy but not miserable. It means that TripAdvisor is not getting any direct SEO benefit from Viator’s ad copy, but rather the ad copy may simply drive improved click-thrus. Not ideal, but not a disaster.
BUT, if Google is using our ad copy to bolster TripAdvisor’s rankings, then I am pissed off. Because that just ain’t right. You know it’s not. It should be against the T&Cs of Google AdSense to do this.
This does not cost the advertiser anything, and in certain situations (i.e. keywords for which the advertiser ranks more than a couple of steps below TripAdvisor) this actually gives the advertiser enhanced visibility, so what is the complaint here really?
Hi Doug
Say you have invested a great deal of time to come up with the top keywords used for things to do in Rome.
You use them in your advertising.
Your competitors (lets be straight about this, that is what we are talking about) come up with system where, completely within their commercial rights via an independent API, they can find out what you consider important keywords – incorporate them into their pages – and POTENTIALLY (this is the question) use those keywords to enhance their page ranking. Those keywords include your own brand name.
This is kind of what TripAdvisor are doing (for all the right reasons, if permitted to do so by Google)
On small scale websites (say you are optimising 100-500 pages individually) you can use your own personal judgement regarding what keywords to use to optimise an individual page to your keywords.
If you are running a website with 60 million pages (like TripAdvisor is) then forget about doing any individual page optimisation at all. Everything you do must come from a data source (e.g. an external API).
Hence the question is – is it fair that TripAdvisor uses Viator’s cleverly crafted keywords for various destinations in their own automated promotional scheme. My view is that of course it is fair – we are talking about business after all – hence this is a barrier to entry.
Viator could stop this (by not advertising on TripAdvisor via Google).
TripAdvisor could struggle to stop this (is it possible to exclude a section of your page from a snippet? Unsure? – there is this princple of GoogleOn / GoogleOff which stops certain text from being presented in results – but not sure if that applies to the general crawl or only to the Google search appliance).
Google could stop this – by supporting GoogleOn/GoogleOff in general search crawling, and ensuring that text presented by Google Adsense API is wrapped with these keywords, as part of the T&Cs for Google Adsense API.
Perhaps Google support GoogleOn/GoogleOff for general search crawling already? Anyone know?
Hi Doug.
The first complaint is – as an advertiser, it’s annoying (just annoying – not criminal) to see the copy we write being used by a competitor! And no, we cannot opt-out of showing these ads on TripAdvisor. You’re wrong on this count. It’s not up to us. We’d have to turn off our entire PPC ad spend with Google (I’m talking about PPC, not Google content).
The second complaint is – as an internet user, what would happen if EVERY SINGLE ADSENSE PUBLISHER used these same tactic. I’ll tell you – very quickly, all of Google’s natural search results would be swamped with PPC ad copy. The natural results would instantly be heavily skewed by what advertisers are on the page, not by what the page itself is about (obviously there’s some correlation here, but you get my point).
The last time I checked this – turning Google’s natural search results into a tool for finding which sites have the most targeted PPC ad copy on them – was not one of the goals of Google’s search engine.
This is going to get more common as google crawls JavaScript nowadays and thus this could theoretically be happening on any site with adsense, even non-api. Having said that, google has probably blocked this off manually, for exactly the reasons listed here.
The case at hand is interesting because when considering a similar issue earlier this year we got a *very* well informed ex Googler to advise on the matter. They recommended loading through iframes that are robots.txt’ed out. We considered all other options and that’s really the only way to do this and ensure it doesn’t get indexed.
The question is: will Google follow their own advice? They can easily make it a requirement of the api that the content has to be blocked from crawlers. The question is if they want to.
That, or viator could also add the exact phrase ‘things to do in rome’ to their page
I don’t understand how it’s good for anyone to have Google index 3rd party ad copy and display it within organic results. It pollutes the system, introduces an unfair bias and is completely confusing to consumers.
Seems like Google’s engineers could figure out a happy medium that allows large customers to customize AdSense without this (likely unintentional?) consequence.
A necessary clarification on my statement quoted above: I do think this is a loophole creating an unfair situation and that TripAdvisor should not exploit it.
However I am in complete disagreement with the main post topic i.e. “Google helping Tripadvisor to maintain barriers to entry”. I can see the point but I think it’s a big stretch.
In fact by limiting API access Google is also limiting the opportunities to exploit the loophole, so I still prefer this situation rather than thousands of sites being indexed on their PPC content.
We should also collectively find a way to check what is the extent of the “problem” – i.e. TripAdvisor after all has 60 million pages, is this trick really giving them incremental SEO benefits?
If you are using Adwords keyword buys to get market traction as a direct competitor to Tripadvisor you are an idiot. So this is less about having your own keywords driving traffic to Tripadvisor than the Adsense API’s failure to police its text ads from being indexed.
I’m sure Google’s search team isn’t overly excited about this since it technically clouds the results with garbage (albeit garbage that is monetized), and the problem is probably less an issue with purposely giving competitive advantage than it is with an engineering flaw…
Also – I imagine if enough people complain to google they’ll change the policy. I just filed a complaint with Adsense and included the link to this article.
Viator are right. TripAdvisor should not be getting a boost in natural rankings from using its advertisers ad copy. Google ought to discount this text from affecting natural search scores, just like they discount any other paid link.
How is this not in violation of Google’s ‘no paid links’ policy? Isn’t this just an example of Google breaking its own policy, by allowing TripAdvisor to benefit from a paid link (in this case, the paid advert text)?
Of course it is ironic the paid link is coming from Google itself. Google clearly should fix this.
Okay, now that I’m not on the iphone I had a better chance to look at the results. To be honest, this seems like a big case of nothing to me. I’m not one to hesitate in pointing out some of the more over-SEO’d tactics of Tripadvisor, but this is just plain normal and has pretty much zilch to do with the adsense API or Google.
First off, Alex, you should always include the search term and url you are using for the search. You are using google.co.uk, which typically returns .co.uk results higher. That result should therefore be discounted, as it’s ranking on totally different merits than just on-page content. If you use .com set to english, that result is gone, and you end up with tripadvisor on spot 2, viator on 3.
The reason Tripadvisor is outranking Viator is that Tripadvisor has the term ‘things to do in Rome’ as the first words in their meta title. They’re certainly not pulling that out of the Adsense API
This means they’ve been targeting that word for ages, probably with a good solid amount of internal links to follow it up.
Viator has this term in their meta title after character 50. You want to put your most valuable terms first as those at the end of a long meta title get deweighted, if counted at all. And they’re trying to rank that page on at least 3 other terms before they get to that one in their meta title. This kind of broad targetting worked very well before 2005, but not so much any more.
As to Google showing Viator’s ad text as on page content. This is just because that text matches the exact search term better than anything in the meta description. The longer the query, the more Google tries to match it exactly with on-page content. This could also happen on any regular adsense page as Google crawls javascript (yes, little known fact). Even without that ad there, Tripadvisor would have outranked viator *easily* as their h1 follows through on their meta title. Viator, not so much (they actually have 2 h1’s, a big no no when it comes to semantics and typically something assigned with spammy SEO plays – I don’t even know if Google would see the second h1 as there is only ever supposed to be one on a page). The combination of Viator trying to focus on too much on one page and thus not focusing on this term at all is what’s causing this. Has zilch to do with Google’s API. In addition, I’d wager that Viator’s meta description isn’t really the kind of ’sentence’ that Google likes to see these days.
Viator’s not really doing anything wrong, they just seem to have maybe fallen behind in terms of SEO tactics. Nowadays, in SEO, less = more.
Last point, I think Viator should actually be *happy* that Google is using that meta description as it’s crappy reading compared to Trip Advisor’s own one: “Attractions in Rome, Lazio: See TripAdvisor’s 3,000 traveler reviews and photos of 540 things you can do when in Rome.” Again, a nice follow up on ‘things .. do in Rome’.
Alex, I submit that you actually should change the very sensationalistic title of this post. Maybe to something like ‘Tripadvisor continues to lead the way in the evolution of SEO’. Equally sensational, but about 100x more correct
Hi Sam
It is to do with the Google Adsense API in the context that if TripAdvisor were using the JavaScript widget then the Viator content wouldn’t appear on the TripAdvisor snippet on the Google search results.
If you read my last paragraph of the original post I did call TripAdvisor astute…. you have to keep pushing until you are told to stop – and that is exactly what TripAdvisor are doing. All credit to them (most large companies don’t ever push hard on anything so nice to see a few that do)
Its really in Google’s hands to determine if they see this as a problem and if so, what they are going to do about it.
I do see it as a problem (as comments have agreed with). One solution would be to support GoogleOn/GoogleOff for crawled pages, and in the Google Adsense API enforce that all content returned by the API is wrapped in those keywords hence excluded from being taken into account within main Google search results.
Alex, as I mentioned in both my comments, no, even with the javascript widget the content sometimes shows in google search. Google crawls javascript and I’ve seen our ad text pop up in sites for years. It’s just not well known by folks
Also, the ad text is hurting tripadvisor more than helping them.
The only reason it’s happening in this case is that the search term is quite long, and google prefers the exact search term to show rather than the better meta description.
On a side note, why can’t Viator switch these ads off on Tripadvisor as explained here http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54588#7 ? Or does the API not considered the content network? Then maybe adding Tripadvisor as a negative keyword would stop the ads showing on tripadvisor sites?
Sam, first of all, these are not considered part of the content network. So no, we can’t just turn it off.
(Sam, just curious, even if this was part of the content network and could be turned off by us, explain why you think this is something Viator ought to deal with at all in the first place? Why should *we* have to clean up Google’s and TripAdvisor’s mess? Why should we have to police where our PPC ad copy appears (beyond typical AdSense placements)? The fact you are putting the onus on us speaks volumes about the underlying problem here, and why it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.)
Second, your comments keep missing the point. Here it is again, in plain terms: PPC ad copy should not be showing up in natural search results.
It’s as simple as that. PPC ad copy should not be showing up in natural search results.
Fair play to TripAdvisor if this is an intentional tactic on their part, assuming it delivers some SEO benefit. My guess is, they may have no idea this is happening. I don’t think TripAdvisor are that clever. Though maybe I’m wrong here.
It doesn’t really matter either way, since ultimately this is a Google issue. As many people have commented, using the API this way pollutes the system and Google needs to make a call – do they want PPC ad copy showing up in natural results, or not?
Let’s hope the answer is “not”.
Scott, I did actually write (several times) that I have also seen this happen with regular adsense, although admittedly, it’s been a while. You’ll also note that in my first comment I explain how Google staff themselves recommend to tackle similar issues on other sites.
I *do* actually believe they (Google) should make Tripadvisor do something about it, although I think we could discuss for ages what ‘deserves’ to show up in the SERPs…
However the jest of this article, and your blog post, are that it’s somehow benefiting Tripadvisor, which I just don’t see to be the case, and definitely not with these keywords. In your post you clearly state not having a problem with the ad, but with the:
“SEO boost from Viator … and Google is giving credit to TripAdvisor for having such fantastically taregted content (which Viator created!!) on its page.
We write a targeted ad about something. And Google uses that content to boost the SEO result of the site it appears on.”
I’m a big fan of Alex and the article itself is well written, but the title coupled with sentences like “However it now comes to light that Google are assisting TripAdvisor to maintain the status quo.” just aren’t correct. Not that the title isn’t true, because Google certainly *is* helping TripAdvisor maintain the barrier to entry, but it’s more with pages like http://www.tripadvisor.com/SmartDeals-g187793-Vatican_City_Lazio-Hotel-Deals.html (#1 for ‘Vatican City deals’ ?!) and a xxx more, on both TA and other sites they’ve bought through the years. You could write several blog posts on how TA, and others, get away with stuff that’s just plain nuts from where I’m sitting, but that’s just the way Google works. The bigger the brand, the more it gets away with.
The only place I see a possibility for SEO benefits relating to this is very long tail terms including your brand. Browsing through a few pages of ‘rome vatican viator’ will bring up TA daughter sites for example.
The only reason I recommended switching it off (presumably negative keywords like ‘tripadvisor’ might work if this is then considered search network?) was that it seemed like you thought it was giving Tripadvisor some unfair advantage for this term. As a competitor you wouldn’t want that, hence switching it off, till Google fixes this (if they do).
Bottom line, I don’t think any of us, except TA (oh, and they *are* that clever
), want to see this content in the SERPs. I also think that if you shout out to Matt Cutts et al, it probably would be dealt with. I can’t imagine that side of Google would be too happy being questioned on this.
Through using this API, TripAdvisor have been able to target a vast majority of flight related terms.
Typical day in the TA office …. let’s think up a new keyword bucket we want to go for.. hmm “cheap airfares to xxx”.. we don’t need to add any destination specific content, just use a machine generated formula for titles, descriptions and Google Adsense will provide all the keyword rich content I need.
Add a flights booking engine on it and away we go… Will Google have a problem? no why should they – if someone clicks on adsense link they’ll get paid so will TA. Everyone is happy.
TA, backed up by some strong one-way inbound linking from the network of sites e.g. hotels.com, hotwire.com and you have a site that has all the ingredients for first page positions on the majority of flights terms.
Do I think it’s right that TA use Google Adsense to populate their pages with content – hell no.. it’s smart, but certainly not ethical.. . Furthermore – they aren’t the first company to be doing this, other comparison sites have been doing the same, just do an exact text search for your ad copy and you’ll be surprised how many other people are doing exactly the same.
Maybe I should get a coffee into me before asking this, but why on earth would Google even want to be indexing adcopy from adsense listings on the site?
Hi Sam.
This is my last word on this, honest!
Personally I do think TA are getting an SEO benefit here. I can’t prove it, and you seem to think “it’s just not true.”
Obviously I do think TA are using PPC copy (not just from Viator – from lots of publishers, TA really don’t care where it comes from) to dump keyword-rich, indexable content onto their pages. Numerous people have made similar accusations, so you seem to be in the minority arguing that this tactic is having zero impact on TA’s natural rankings.
So let’s agree to disagree.
At least we agree on one thing – Google ought to stop this, if only to prevent AdWords publishers from getting pissed when they see their own PPC copy appearing on a competitor’s natural search result.
I also fundamentally believe, once again, that PPC copy has no place in a natural search result. Full stop. No exceptions. Never.
I wish Google would clarify their policy and get serious about removing this clutter from the natural-search ecosystem.
Hey Scott
If the big G wanted to remove these results from the serps they could easily do so. So why dont they?
My guess is that it’s not included in one of their rank algorithms and only shows in the serp description so therefore they think it’s not that important to remove it. Or they could just be making a shitload of revenue from it and haven’t had enough complaints.
However, I’m with you that it should not be included in the serps as it is helping TA get click-thru’s, advertising $’s and natural ranking for your brand. And if G are all for giving the brand more authority in the serps then this should be fixed.
oh, and it’s no coincidence that TA haven’t included your particular phrase anywhere on the site as body text.
Editor’s Note:
I have asked TripAdvisor twice if they would care to comment on this article.
They registered its existence but said they do not comment on issues such as SEO.
And following up Kevin’s request for comment from TripAdvisor, I did ask Google PRIOR to publishing, but was referred to the public FAQs.
It doesn’t surprise me that TA wouldn’t respond publicly to this. As I said in my last comment (Anon) TA aren’t the only ones doing this. Nexttag.co.uk, bizrate.co.uk are all doing the same.
Just go into Google, put in a money term, grab someones headline, copy and paste it into Google SERPS within quotations. You’ll see loads of sites who are implementing the same thing.
Is anybody high up in the SEO world talking to Google about how they are RUINING travel-related search results by permitting TripAdvisor to pollute the first 1/3 of results? This sucks it for small business owners like me, particularly since we aren’t even able to submit to Google Local Biz Ads in our country (Panama). I find this infuriating, especially since a good portion of the results pulled from TripAdvisor aren’t particularly relevant. WTF?