Update on Google Places and TripAdvisor

I recently posted an article concerning the sudden Disappearance of TripAdvisor Reviews from Google Places and Maps Results.   I’ve been looking more closely at some individual Google Maps/Places results, following feedback from a B&B owner.

For some properties a TripAdvisor Rating now appears in their Google Places details, and some but not all of their reviews are still reported. Here’s an example: http://bit.ly/gs9wsQ

A Google Places Listing Dec 7 2010

Click on ‘More info’ and you’ll find that 3 of the 5 reviews come from TA. Still odd, though, as the property in question has 22 reviews on TripAdvisor’s own site.

Additionally, in the body of the Google Places listing there is a comment next to “Standard” relating to TripAdvisor :

• Standard‎: TripAdvisor Travel Rating 4.5/5.0

However, for most hotels and B&Bs, there are no TA reviews and there is no TA Rating included in the description of facilities.


"London Hotels" search - No TripAdvisor Reviews

Whatever is going on, it appears that it is not by mutual consent that TripAdvisor’s reviews no longer appear in the majority of Google Places/Maps results.  Elsewhere a ‘Google spokesperson’ is reported as saying:

“We’re aware of a technical issue in which TripAdvisor reviews are sometimes not appearing in results for Google Places, and our team is working to resolve the matter.”

Of course, ‘working to resolve the matter’ could mean just about anything – an internal bug at TA, the same at Google, or a dispute between the pair of them.

We’ll be watching to see what happens …

Update 8th December 10.24am CET

According to a report on Tnooz, TripAdvisor confirmed today in an email that while it continues to evaluate recent changes to Google Places it believes the user does not benefit with the “experience of selecting the right hotel”.

“As a result, we have currently limited TripAdvisor content available on those pages,” an official says.

The only mention at this stage is of Google Places – but this could quite feasibly extend to Maps or elsewhere (an initial search found no TripAdvisor reviews on Google Maps).

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