Early in October Google made changes to Maps user experience, which impacts the Hotel Ads “mapresults” placement. They added new features and made some visually appealing updates to the user interface. It’s possible in the images below to see just how much this experience has evolved in the last 2 to 3 years.

2014

2014-2015

Today

What changed in Google Maps?

The first thing you might notice is that the interface looks much cleaner. This has evolved over time, and was achieved by following the old adage “less is more.” By stripping out hotel phone number, full address and single reviews Google increased the number of hotels listed by as much as 3X. This change creates an improved search (and research) experience for users.

As a part of the UI changes, Google has improved the filter experience when searching for Hotels in the Maps product. Could this be a sign that we will get back all of those filters we had with the hotelfinder placement?

In this experience, users can more easily adjust the date and immediately filter their results to relevant properties. In addition to date selection, users can also filter by hotel Rating (Google customer rating) and Hotel class.

What does this mean for Hotel Ads?

It is still early, but we have already seen performance shifts on the mapresults placements that appear to be a result of or related to these changes. Some advertisers are seeing a higher click through rates, while others are seeing flat performance. With conversion rates remaining stable, in some cases we have observed a lift in incremental traffic and bookings. All of this has occurred without a substantial change in the average cost per click.

Overall we count this as a win to users that should translate into positive results for most advertisers.