Similar to when Google bought ITA Software in the summer of 2010, officials are avoiding saying yet what the search giant intends to do with its purchase of Frommer’s travel guides.
This means it is left to everyone else to try and figure it all out, asking whether the likely outcome is whether Google will “abuse” its already dominant position in search (at least in the vast majority of so-called developed countries) to a dizzying array of theories as to its motivation and strategy going forward around travel content.
On the one hand, buying an established travel guide publisher in the shape of the ex-Wiley owned brand should give the search engine the opportunity to integrate other services (such as Places, Flight Search, Hotel Finder et al) into the Frommer’s pages.
Eyeballs on the content leads to more users of its other products, right?
Possibly, but that would require Frommer’s content to feature strongly in existing search engine results (SERPS).
Analysis carried out by UK-based search agency Greenlight for Tnooz paints a picture suggesting the acquisition of Frommer’s is not primarily driven by its existing performance in search.
Far from it, perhaps.
Using its Hydra platform, Greenlight ran a test on how well Frommer’s features for a range of search queries.
The data is currently only available for searches on Google UK, but nevertheless its content is usually written for an English speaking audience, regardless of whether it’s UK, Canada, US et al.
The Hydra system examined over 35,000 travel-related keywords to see how well Frommer’s SERPS visibility is on Google UK.
In short, it has next to zero visibility, according to the test, with just 0.01% of SERPS featuring Frommer’s content. For comparison purposes, the same test was run for Lonely Planet, pretty much Frommer’s main rival on the guidebook front (and also owned by a another massive internet property in the shape of the BBC).
Hydra, once again, found what it describes as “very low visibility”, but LP fares better than Frommer’s with a 1.51% exposure in SERPS.
But while Lonely Planet ranks in the top ten for around 5,500 travel-related keywords, most of which are spread geographically in terms of query types, Frommer’s once again is performing less well as its top ten ranking only relates to 1,400 travel-related words, the majority of which are related to US content.
This evidence, such as it is just for Google UK at the moment, illustrates that Frommer’s existing content strategy is perhaps not why Google has decided to buy the company.
First of all, why does Frommer’s seemingly appear to be out of the loop when it comes to being a leading resource on the web for destination discovery-hungry consumers?
One possible reason that is not often disclosed (or realised) is that the guidebook brand did not put its latest content online – in other words, the fresh stuff from the guidebooks remains in printed form for quite a considerable amount of time, according to sources.
Some of the content on the site is, in fact, when compared to the material in the guidebooks, one or even two editions out of date.
It is, effectively, a “print first” publisher, meaning that users are less likely to find its web content valuable if it turns out to be inaccurate or out of date compared to what a consumer can pick up in the guidebook or, indeed, find elsewhere on the web. Thus the low rankings in SERPS.
Google is more than likely to change all that, if content is the primary play here, with guidebook material making its way immediately on to the web.
That, of course, is possibly the standalone strategy for the publisher – where it gets more interesting is the integration of that content with other services outside of the Frommer’s bubble.
Director of SEO at Greenlight, Adam Bunn, says:
“In the long term, Google can theoretically offer a self-contained travel service incorporating ratings and reviews, guides and flight search through its previous acquisition of ITA, threatening the travel aggregator business model.”
This is already starting to manifest in some ways, with rapidly evolving SERPS for destinations, including content from Google Places, Maps, etc.
And, more recently, a test which is slowly being rolled out in a number of countries around the world, where some search queries return a new feature at the top of the page.
In this example, a search for “vigeland park oslo” on Google.no sees the addition of a “Tourist Attractions” bar, sub-headed as ” Frequently mentioned on the web”.
This, Google says, is populated by tapping into its so-called Knowledge Graph – a process of finding images and content from around the web which are ranked by frequency of mentions elsewhere on the web and how often users are looking at the content.
It being a test, results are often quite random, with pics captured from Wikipedia on some occasions or from Google Images on others. Interestingly, the featured image is often not the leading one found in Google Images.
It’s a small change, of course, but an interesting picture (no pun intended) emerges when all the other apparent small changes that have taken place on Google in recent years are piled in together.
What Google appears to be doing, albeit slowly and carefully, is evolving into a travel platform, not JUST a lead generator through clicks on ads or metasearch via Flight Search and Hotel Finder.
Yes, of course, it all eventually boils down to generating leads for its commercial partners, but in a process that positions Google at multiple positions in the search, shop, buy and share cycle for travel consumers.
The acquisition of Frommer’s, with its original content alongside that of user review service Zagat last year, is just one part of a fascinating jigsaw puzzle.
NB: Hat-tip TravellersPoint for the tourist attractions top-bar test image.
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Just me that reckons the real reason they bought it was that it was a bloody good deal. Work out what to do afterwards. Wouldn’t be the first time.
@stuart – good deal, yes. But a lot more to it.
it’s pieces of a jigsaw coming together to form a coherent piece. eventually. there might be a smidgen of usage within frommer’s that GOOG is willing to pay for, that will add to that jigsaw.
I agree Stuart. To Google this deal was the equivalent of scooping the loose coins off their bedroom dresser and handing them to Wiley in exchange for a business. They could do this 20 more times with 20 other companies if they wanted and still have 95% of their cash hoard left. It doesn’t take a genius to integrate this with their ITA deal results + maps and make money off it.
@tim – what else do you think they could buy (or need to buy) to give that fully fledged service?
Google the webs new encyclopedia of knowledge: Frommers $23 million cheap text content and image content = no more generic (mainly) wiki links. Well, aside from a little drop down menu of other suggestions.
FWIW, the bar at the top with the thumbnails is not limited to travel related searches, at least currently. For example, search “Bruce Willis Movies”
@lucas – yup, sorry, should’ve mentioned that in the piece. It’s like so-called premium content from within search that hasn’t been bought. Kinda
My guess is that Google will incorporate its Frommers content into its Google+ local pages, just like it has done with its Zagat acquisition. Frommers content may be a bit shallow, but it is very extensive and it has the authority of coming from an independent travel writer as opposed to biased content supplied by the subject of each review. There’s enough content there to really lift the profile of Google+ local pages and make them a more useful resource for Google users.
I met with one of the directors of Frommers this time last summer about content & video production – it was certainly interesting. Their digital strategy was near non-existant, infact most of it was as a B2B service and not B2C, strategy still coming from the US publishing department meant that it was focused heavily on print. They had talked about developing more online interactive content but at that point was a pipe-dream.
Lonely Planet certainly leads by example, but supported by BBC it is no wonder it does well globally. There certainly needs to be a challenger to the travel content and type of content. Unfortunately many travel guides repeat the same old advice and suggestions with little that is fresh and new. Formats of the printed versions do differ but on the whole content is largely the same. Travelers end up at the same haunts thinking they have a unique itinerary.
Furthermore many phone Apps just don’t cut it. Either lack of information, access, bad interfaces or struggle to work without an internet/3G connection – hardly ideal when in the middle of the countryside in Argentina, Vietnam, Cambodia or even Spain. Travelers just cannot afford the cost of connectivity.
Printed guides will continue to succeed while on travels for some time, but it’s the research element before departing that needs to be better explored and Google are in a prime position to take advantage of this.
Keeping in mind that Google’s self-described mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (and reward shareholders while doing that), this does seem like part of a planned move into the travel space.
I agree with Kevin’s view of this in the article, that Google is gathering all the pieces so that they can be a one-stop destination for people seeking travel information. That means more relevant searches, and more content on those search results, but what does it do to the content market? How does Lonely Planet and others compete?
Who knows, maybe this will force the travel content publishers to come up with a better digital strategy? Maybe TripAdvisor will decide to buy up a content publisher to bolster their search results? Or Yahoo.
This could shake things up for a while.
@ron – not sure TRIP needs to buy a content publisher to bolster its search results. It’s sitting on a lot of its own already, and it’ll probably figure out ways of featuring in SERPS still if and when GOOG changes the flow on the site.
The great secret of Google is that no one knows their strategy but them. And all the speculation won’t make a whit of difference to what it decides to do. It has earned its dominant position in travel, it only ‘abuses’ it in the eyes fo those who don’t like it, and it has made a positive contribution to hotels and travel which is legendary and I don’t think will ever be rivalled by any other organisation in our time. here at Innfinite we are huge protagonists of everything Google, Google leads and we follow, save us speculating too!
Unlike Facebook, where the financial markets clearly agree with our assessment of its commerciality at Innfinite, a view we are well known to have held for years now. Nothing has changed to change our skepticism, and it would be a brave person to predict whether the shares are even a buy at half price (currently $19.05 today and falling)
@robert – you’re really not very keen on Facebook are you?
Kevin, nor is Wall Street!
@Robert Gilmour – I’d put a caveat on your statement that Wall Street isn’t keen on Facebook. After all, they’re still trading at 100x earnings. It’s just that Facebook was never a 100bn$ company.
I agree with Stuart and Tim – it’s an easy decision, even if they don’t do much with it.
There’s a fascinating video to go with the screenshot on the Google Knowledge Graph blog. ‘Explore lists and collections with Google search’: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html
I think the article and many of the comments hit tangentially at the core strategy, which Ron correctly states has the objective “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
The question is what method most efficiently enables a roadmap to accomplish this goal and get all the destination-related information organized?
My theory: Google is seeking unique, deep web content that can serve as the foundation for semantic mapping of travel information across a wide variety of fragmented destination-related content.
@Kevin is dead-on. The Tourist Attractions Bar is semantic content (as @Lucas highlights – it applies to movies as well.) The Frommers content doesn’t just tap into Google’s Travel Knowledge Graph, by semantically structuring the content, it provides the hub for the destination-related portion of the Travel Knowledge Graph.
The Frommers content provides valuable historical, cultural, proximity and product category contextual relationships for the “important” stuff that comprises a destination.
Similarly, ITA Software provides the deep web content necessary to support the air transportation logistics portion of the Travel Knowledge Graph. Google Maps/Local now has a good amount of subway/transit information to support local logistics, as well as Google Maps Navigation functionality on Android that allows it to provide real-time transit directions the same way it provides driving directions.
Google is extremely interested in travel because it is a major aspect of human life – one that inherently places individuals in an unfamiliar environment. In the offline world, travel guides help travelers survive unfamiliar environments by organizing information about a destination to make it more accessible and useful.
Online, thousands of links, even in descending relevance order does not provide similar utility.
@Ryan – You may be underestimating the power of mobile. Google has gotten pretty good at providing offline Google Docs & Gmail by caching & syncing the content to the device. If you are operating in a specific area, your device can hold a lot of relevant information – especially if it understands the nature of your visit from a semantic perspective. Personal+semantic+mobile is an incredibly powerful and efficient combination. I don’t see lacking a live Internet connection as a deal-killer; a dead battery however, is another story entirely…
I disagree with Stuart – Google has never bought anything simply because it was cheap. They acquire assets that create value by providing unique a technology, functional leadership within a niche, or in this case, unique content that may be structured to improve interoperability of other Google assets. The Zagat acquisition (a strong brand and scalable model for supporting curated social product reviews) also falls into this category.
I remain firmly convinced that Google has no desire to become an OTA. By leveraging comparison shopping and meta-search, Google Advisor for Travel can start piecing together the best alternatives to ultimately provide a personally relevant end-to-end travel experience that can still be fulfilled (and monetized) through advertising-supported lead referral model.
@robert – thx!
My other theory was that they liked the colour
Yeah I get that it’s a similar purchase to the zagat purchase and it adds juice to SEO, and could improve the customer experience or be used in the personalisation of search (is that still hot?), and incease ‘interoperability’, my new favourite word.
But why Frommers. I expect the BBC would love to get rid of the politically sensitive Lonely Planet (for the right price). Pearson could do with some cash now too. I wonder.
Cause it was for sale at the right price and immediatally available? Who knows. Either way it looks like the UKs largest travel company (or company in the travel space) has made a smart purchase at a good price….
@stuart – yeah, red is best.
As usual, RobertKCole is pretty right on.
@StuartL: Pearson doesn’t have much to offer. Its DK travel brands are doing well and they wouldn’t want to get rid of them. It has nothing to author on the digital side with Rough Guides because the copyright is owned by authors for the most part. BBC likely does want to unload LP, but as great as they are in some things, their point of interest content (which we all guess is why Google bought Frommer’s) is weaker than Frommer’s. Although LP’s reach is wider, its books are updated less often — as we’ve been reminded lately by some optimistic Syria copy on its site that was written in 2007.
@Ryan: Not sure why the person you spoke with appeared to be so uninformed about his own company. In the U.S., Frommers.com has spent the past few years delivering as many pageviews as LP.com and Fodors.com combined on a routine basis. The digital content also appears on NYTimes.com and Bing Travel, and original web content appeared on MSNBC, Yahoo, and newspaper websites (including the Independent and Guardian in the UK). B2C was a very, very healthy part of the business. I can’t say how healthy, but I can add an extra “very” to my description.
@Kevin: You’re totally right about the print-first strategy. Unfortunately most guidebook companies are like this. Sometimes its hard for publishing companies to see this, but I’m certain Google will.
For the SERP test does it take into account paid placement? Most media/content brands can’t compete with the hundreds of millions that the Pricelines and TripAdvisors spend each year bidding up the cost of top travel terms. Either way, I think that a look at SERPS in the U.S. would demonstrate something different. It does speak to the brand’s weakness in the UK, though (which you likely also see on the bookshelf).
Thanks for the kind words Jason.
You also bring up an excellent point of Frommers content being used by Bing. The same scenario applied with ITASoftware. Thinking some small portion of the valuation / decisions for both deals could be attributed to acquiring control over Microsoft’s source content…
@Jason “In the U.S., Frommers.com has spent the past few years delivering as many pageviews as LP.com and Fodors.com combined on a routine basis.”
Looking at the Quantcast figures for Frommers & Fodors (no point for LP as they’re not directly measured), the numbers look to be close to on par for the two for the US, with, if anything Fodors outperforming Frommers in the last coupla quarters.
http://www.quantcast.com/frommers.com
http://www.quantcast.com/fodors.com
Curious on your take.
You’re looking at people rather than page views. With visits, Fodors.com routinely beats it. But p/vs shows that Frommers.com is about double that of Fodors.com every month, which is what I referred to. More people come to Fodors.com (I think they’ve worked hard over the past year to make SEO-friendly pages and they have a nice relationship with TripAdvisor), but the users they get don’t stay very long in comparison.
Fair nuf – my bad.
LP, at least last year, was claiming via BBC 40m pageviews per month, which is more than the Frommers + Fodors combined (according to QC), but I assume that is globally – and obviously isn’t independently verified.
Interesting.
I’m sure those LP numbers are fairly accurate. Globally, they do win, and that’s likely reflected in Kevin’s SERP work.
There are 3 possible reasons I would buy Frommer if I were G (which I am not):
- brand
- curators
- advertiser portfolio specialized in travel ads (print, coupons…)
Very interesting and thoughtful discussion!
I agree with those observing that Frommer’s was a good value based on its price and the content Google will get for it. Frommer’s is a leading player in its category, and has a vast amount of content, including a massive database on points of interest (POI). To its credit, Frommer’s is also a sterling brand name. How many of us bought Arthur Frommer’s “Europe on $5 a day” (actually, by the time I took my first trip to Europe, I think it was more like $10/day)? If it weren’t for Arthur Frommer, travel writers/personalities like Rick Steves and others probably wouldn’t exist.
Back to the Big G…
Google is a – perhaps *the* – big data company. Google leverages that data primarily to make the search terms and advertising it presents us with that much more useful.
For its big data/search/advertising strategy to work as well as it can, Google, in travel, is building on two columns.
One column is technology — products and tools like ITA Software, the airline reservations product, Flight Search, Hotel Finder, Maps, etc.
The second column is content. This, to me, is where Frommer’s fits in, along with StreetView, Zagat, Google+, YouTube, etc.
With its vast POI database, Frommer’s can help Google enrich its content. Kevin’s already noted how Frommer’s content can be brought online in a more current, timely manner compared to what the company does now. Any reviews (existing and future) can help Google enrich its various social media assets, such as Google+ and YouTube. Assets like Zagat and Frommer’s can help Google provide make technology tools like Maps, HotelFinder, and FlightSearch results more useful than they are now and, importantly, more useful than those of its competitors.
Add to this mobile and semantic search, which several have already commented on, neither of which are exclusively related to travel but both of which can help make any Google travel-related services better.
Think about this from the big data perspective. As Google acquires more assets like Zagat, Frommer’s, etc., it increases its utility, not only helping it maintain and increase its share of the core search market, but using the information we search to create richer, hopefully better, profiles of its customers. This improved insight should help it improve the search results we’re presented with and Google’s advertising targeting, and thus the performance of those ads for its clients.
Again, as has been noted by Kevin and others, this is one more piece in a jigsaw puzzle. We know the puzzle isn’t finished. The interesting question is — what’s next?
Insightful as always, Henry.
The question I have is that as Google gets in the content creation business (and not just aggregation, organization or curation), it will start looking more like a media company and less like a tech company. We all know how AOL/Time Warner ended. Isn’t there the danger that Google is going the same route with Zagat+Frommer+?
Good question, Pedro.
I’d say Google is already very much a media company.
One can hope that Google’s execs will have learned a lesson from AOL/Time Warner. Thus far, it appears Google is acting with a reasonable degree of discipline, precision, and rationale. It’s not a “land grab,” a la AOL/Time Warner, nor does Google appear to be entering parts of the media world that are dramatically unrelated to its core focus.
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