google travel
October 26th, 2005
Do a search on Google for "Orlando Chicago" and you’ll get something quite interesting:
There are a few unanswered questions about this new functionality. 1) Is Expedia, Hotwire and Orbitz paying for this exposure? 2) If so, are they paying a flat fee or on a pay-per-click basis? and 3) How did Expedia get the No. 1 spot?
Secondarily, 1) What are the people at .travel thinking? and 2) How do you feel right now if you’re a secondary travel site?
The other issue here is could this be a window into job search functionality for Google? Imagine the same box on job searches with CareerBuilder, Monster and HotJobs as options?
I hope not.
Such functionality would be a major sellout for Google. Employers would feel obligated to use one, if not all of the promoted services. It would absolutely kill niche sites, many of whom do a fine job for their clients. Much of the potential effectiveness of the .jobs domain would be diluted.
Lastly, I can’t see it being good for Google’s pay-per-click revenues, unless that would be made-up by the millions spent by the big boards to gain such placement.
It’s too early to get too excited about this, but duplicating what Google has done with travel to the job space would create major waves for a lot of people, mostly negative.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that but Google is smart enough to not launch goole-jobs with just a handful of potential paying customers.