This week Google launched a new set of shortcuts in their mobile search aimed at directing users to their favorite information faster and easier than ever. These new shortcuts automatically appear on the Google home screen for mobile. While the options for iOS users are quite limited only including weather, sports, entertainment, and food & drink, there are many additional shortcuts including “Book a Hotel” available for Android users. The user path to the Book a Hotel shortcut is shown in the screenshots below.

1. Android user clicks on the arrow on the mobile homepage to show more options
2. User scrolls down to the “Travel” section and clicks on “Book a Hotel”
3. User is directed to the search results page for “hotels” and can scroll down to Hotel Ads*

*The Hotel Ads have a standard default date pre-populated and hotels are within the local vicinity of the user.

What does this mean for advertisers?

Right now, the immediate impact of this change is unclear.  The impact of shortcuts will largely depend on its popularity with users. The purchase path to hotels is currently a bit longer through shortcuts than the typical mobile search. As shown in the purchase path above, it takes 3 clicks and some scrolling for a user to land on Hotel Ads compared to simply typing “hotels” in the search bar.

Although currently the additional shortcuts that include Book a Hotel are only available to Android users, we would anticipate that strong adoption could lead to a full iOS roll out in the future.