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TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

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Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#21
post #10

Trip Advisor has been fairly hit and miss for me. The star ratings especially for hotels have a weird value judgement in them that isn't at all congruent with mine. I'll see run down crappy hotels with 5 stars while much much nicer hotels with better amenities and locations are rated with 3 stars. Some way to specify the profile of the rater's you care about would be a huge improvement. Things like traveling with chi…

check out what i'm making at https://dokomaps.com a simple travel recommender based on lists of what people shared previously. Just find someone that matches your interest and follow their recommandations

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#22
post #16

Reposting myself on the subject[1]: For anyone not aware (or confused by Silicon Valley tradition on constantly rewriting origin stories), TripAdvisor started in the dot com bubble as a B2B site. They clearly stated their business model was to provide reviews to other sites. Only that after the bubble burst, TripAdvisor had none left. They then basically invented modern SEO: long descriptive URLs, pages pulled out of…

This comment ads nothing of particular value. TripAdvisor, just like many of the businesses that thrived around Google and search engines in general, use SEO to promote their own services. Nothing wrong with that.

The wrong bit here is that Google is acting as a dangerous monopoly, disregarding privacy and as of recently, shamelessly stealing markets from its own customers. Few years ago in Europe it was sanctioned for stealing news from news agencies, and the echo chamber around hn criticised news agencies and governments trying to prevent this madness.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#23

It really hasn't been covered enough just how much Google has replaced organic search results with their own features. In some cases it's almost all of the above the fold real estate and for shopping they are starting to take over the checkout experience as well. It's significantly reducing organic traffic and turning e-commerce sites into Google suppliers.

It's been going on a long time, Google's been killing off aggregators by cannibalising their market for almost a decade now. I do wonder how sustainable it is, previously these aggregators did lots of things at Google's request, cleaning the noise out and laying everything out in nice data-annotations. More fool them, it turns out. Google cross-references them all, builds their 'own' data and drives them all out of b…

Cannibalising publishers is a separate issue from showing too many ads, and I don't follow which of these you think nationalizing a search engine will solve.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#24

This is what happens when you pay huge amounts of money on Google Ads and traffic. They notice that you must be quite profitable if you afford to pay so much, so they come for your market. It will happen more and more and the more you pay to Google the more you help them take you out of the market.

If it took Google that long to implement it, another search engine will beat them to the punch by simply noting that many users search for this information and would be much happier to get it without clicking through to another site.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nationalised search service" ... interesting thought. Legions of Librarians, finally compensated justly and lauded for their heroism. Wonder if they'd get uniforms and "be all you can be" recruiting campaigns too.

Something like DuckDuckGo operated like Let's Encrypt. If it can be done for key management, why not search corpus? What's the annual cost, $10MM? Maybe a bit more, but not crazy expensive. Someone with search experience (ChuckMcM or greglindahl) would be able to say with more certainty.

[deleted]

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#26

This is what happens when you pay huge amounts of money on Google Ads and traffic. They notice that you must be quite profitable if you afford to pay so much, so they come for your market. It will happen more and more and the more you pay to Google the more you help them take you out of the market.

1 more thought on this - Expedia and Booking are next on their menu...

Expedia had a bad last quarter and blamed it on Google. Booking has a good quarter and said they did a better job with retaining visitors to skip Google.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been going on a long time, Google's been killing off aggregators by cannibalising their market for almost a decade now. I do wonder how sustainable it is, previously these aggregators did lots of things at Google's request, cleaning the noise out and laying everything out in nice data-annotations. More fool them, it turns out. Google cross-references them all, builds their 'own' data and drives them all out of b…

"Nationalised search service" ... interesting thought. Legions of Librarians, finally compensated justly and lauded for their heroism. Wonder if they'd get uniforms and "be all you can be" recruiting campaigns too.

You've got a space force with their own wacky uniforms, so anything is possible.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 more thought on this - Expedia and Booking are next on their menu...

Expedia had a bad last quarter and blamed it on Google. Booking has a good quarter and said they did a better job with retaining visitors to skip Google.

I wish these guys would follow AirBnb in at least pretending to care about design. I know Booking.com is trying, and for that I can retain the knowledge of going directly to Booking.com/AirBnb.

TripAdvisor's site is a nightmare to navigate. It's easier to find things by searching them on Google than trying to navigate TripAdvisor. I won't lose sleep once someone finds out how to arrange their information in a cleaner format.

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#29

It really hasn't been covered enough just how much Google has replaced organic search results with their own features. In some cases it's almost all of the above the fold real estate and for shopping they are starting to take over the checkout experience as well. It's significantly reducing organic traffic and turning e-commerce sites into Google suppliers.

It's been going on a long time, Google's been killing off aggregators by cannibalising their market for almost a decade now. I do wonder how sustainable it is, previously these aggregators did lots of things at Google's request, cleaning the noise out and laying everything out in nice data-annotations. More fool them, it turns out. Google cross-references them all, builds their 'own' data and drives them all out of b…

This makes me think about how Google has begun to demand recipe sites include Calorie counts.

Are we a few years away from Google Recipe Search?

Re: TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

#30

"...The company had just over 3,800 staff at the end of September.." I am surprised why they need such high number of staff when the functionality of the website is limited to content, reviews, search itineraries. Unless they hire field agents and ask them go inquire and write about a new place.

This along with the comment about them being in the SP500 got me interested. They are doing more than just the site we all immediately thought of when we saw "TripAdvisor". There's also "InstantBooking" [0], widgets, tools, a platform (it seems) for marketing/buying sponsored listings, analytics, "photo tools", and probably more. All of that was just from what they listed on products. Besides this, they are surely do…

From TripAdvisors "About" page:

The subsidiaries and affiliates of TripAdvisor, Inc. own and operate a portfolio of websites and businesses, including the following travel media brands: www.airfarewatchdog.com, www.bokun.io, www.bookingbuddy.com, www.cruisecritic.com, www.familyvacationcritic.com, www.flipkey.com,www.thefork.com (including www.lafourchette.com, www.eltenedor.com, and www.restorando.com), www.holidaylettings.co.uk, www.holidaywatchdog.com, www.housetrip.com, www.jetsetter.com, www.niumba.com, www.onetime.com, www.oyster.com, www.seatguru.com, www.smartertravel.com, www.tingo.com, www.vacationhomerentals.com and www.viator.com.

That's a ton of subsidiary companies and explains a lot IMO.

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