It has finally happened. Google have moved their ‘Hotel Finder’, previously only found at www.google.ie/hotels into the search engine results page (SERP) in what will prove to be yet another headache for hotels.

It had been long anticipated that Google would start to move more proactively into this space, and since their announcement of a Hotel Finder in July 2011, it has simply been a matter of when, and not if, the product would be moved into the SERPs. This move will increase Google’s user base and it’s potential as a hotel booking originator significantly.

Below is a screenshot of a search for ‘Dublin Hotels’ – Click image to view larger format:

Google Hotel Finder

So what this basically means is that any organic search engine traffic now appears well below the fold, meaning you have to pay a premium to appear in the top place results…a premium that is absolutely unsustainable for any hotel aiming to pursue premium keywords.

In a nutshell, Google has figured out a way to generate incremental revenues from the search engine results real estate it provided for free in the past, such as Google Places, Google Maps, etc.

Who Are The Winners From The New Google Hotel Finder?

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Like hotels, contracts with OTAs prohibit airlines from offering lower fares on their sites. Instead, airlines such as JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines and Virgin America often provide discount codes in emails to their frequent fliers or through Facebook and Twitter.

Carriers are offering more deals to passengers who book flights directly on their websites. It’s an effort to steer people away from online travel agencies such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, which charge the carriers commissions of roughly $10 to $25 a ticket.

Frontier Airlines is the latest carrier to jump into the fight, announcing Wednesday that it will penalize passengers who don’t book directly with the airline. Those fliers won’t be able to get seat assignments until check-in. And they’ll pay more in fees while earning half as many frequent flier miles.

Particularly for families, it provides an incentive to book directly,” said Daniel Shurz, Frontier’s senior vice-president, commercial. “There is no logical reason for our customers to want to book anywhere else.”

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There seems to be a lot of confusion and dis-information surrounding the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of Title Tags, META Descriptions and META Keywords from self styled ‘SEO Gurus’. In this article we will give you a clear and concise outline of what each is and how much value and importance they are to SEO not only from our own experience, but also from Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam and Search Team.

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Brand managers are constantly looking for important insights into Facebook user behavior. More specifically, recently businesses have begun to ask why do people unlike business pages and how can we better communicate the company’s brand message? Here is a an overview of some of the main reasons fans abandon your page:

1. There’s No Spark Any More

The top reason users Unlike a page on Facebook is, “The brand was no longer of interest to me.” Maybe they went through their list of Likes to pare it down one day and you didn’t make the cut. Or, they saw a post of yours one day and it just struck them that you have nothing to offer anymore.

So how do you grab their attention? We have found that more than 90 percent of people pay attention to the brand message when interacting with incentivized engagements.

Simply put, what’s in it for me? You don’t have to give away the house, nor should every message be a contest or giveaway. There should be an expectation in users, though, that incentives are a regular part of your message and they should stay tuned to see what’s next.

2. You’re Kind of Boring

The number two reason for fans to stop following, with 46 percent of respondents citing this as the reason, was that the information shared by the brand wasn’t interesting.

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Each time a subscriber opens an email sent with us, we keep track of which email client they’re using. We’ve measured email client popularity across many millions of emails and occasionally collate that data to show interesting trends in email client usage.

Most popular email clients

Below is the email client market share as of June 2012. These numbers are not exclusive, some people use more than one email client during the month – which registers each client used.

Movers and Shakers

The movers and shakers highlights those email clients whose market share is growing or shrinking the fastest. This is done by comparing the average usage between 2009 and 2012.

The Fine Print

The email client a person is using can only be detected if images are displayed. This can give an inflated weighting to email clients that display images by default, such as Outlook 2000 and the iPhone. It will also provide a lesser weighting to those that block images by default such as Gmail and Outlook 2007. Those email clients that aren’t capable of displaying images, such as older Blackberry models and other mobile devices cannot be included in this study