What is up with Google?
 

Is anyone else having problems doing a google search for hotels?

Every time I try and do a google search to find a hotel website, tripadvisor, findahotel, hotel-roomswhatever and everything else pops up except for the hotel website.

This is so fustrating. Can anyone suggest another search engine?

GoT, go to page 2 of your results. Page 1 is nothing but ads for other search engines in my google searches. But beginning on p2, you get all the old reliable google responses...I think must be some kind of adware causing this...the same kind that changes your homepage and your search engine, even rearranges my online toolbar! Frustrating I agree!!!!

My teenager uses the same computer for downloading games and songs, so I blame all this on her. I run virusscan every day now, and it ALWAYS finds "adware" which it either deletes or quarantines (a large percentage cannot be delted, so my quarantine list must be growing).

Funny you ask. There was just a thread about this on the Europe board a week or so ago. Very frustrating, I agree.

One suggestion was Dogpile instead of Google, and since then I have found a few direct hotel websites easier there than on Google.

Like joan, I sometimes keep going through the list, but still often can't find a direct link to an actual hotel website.

Use the "feeling lucky" button when looking for the bigger hotels. There's no hope for the smaller hotels though! Ugh. You can go pages and pages and still never find the right web site.

Tried Lycos with the same results. I'm off to dogpile.com.

If I don't return, it is because I'm beating my head bloody against a wall somewhere in frustration.

Go Travel-I was also frustrated with google searches. I have found that if I go to the Chamber of Commerce or Visitor's Bureau websites of the area I want to visit, they have a list of area hotels and their direct web sites.

Hi Buckeyemom!
What a great idea!

Can Yahoo search help?

I give up.

Uncle.

My money's in the freezer.

The safe combo is 10-10-220.

Helen Keller's in the attic.

I give up.

Go Travel,
Just out of curiosity, what hotel's web page are you googleing- dogpiling- lycosing for but cannot find?

It started this afternoon when I was trying to find the website for the Coronado Hotel in Bal Harbour.

I googled to no avail. I had been using google for so long with such great results, I never bothered with other search engines.

This lead me on the hunt for the great search engine.

The Coronado Hotel is located at 9501 Collins Ave., Miami Beach
Phone # is: 866-282-9330
If you have any other questions, I will be happy to help you. Enjoy our city!

Here's what going on

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinv...le-cover_x.htm

Very interesting article, Paul.

Somebody wanna make a million dollars?

Institute a new search engine where you simply list the name of a company, hotel, restaurant, or whatever, and all you get is the actual website listing for that company.

Marcia, I think you missed the basic point. A lot of people want websites, not phone numbers. Phone numbers don't have pictures, location maps, rate information and all the other stuff that we like websites for.

Google is unceasingly helpful, provided you scan down the list of potential sites and select the obvious one. Separating webpages from others isn't all that difficult,Google is hands down the best thing going. I too saw the complaint on Europe and just couldn't see that the problem was all that major. IMHO.

nor, I guess the problem is that we got spoiled because you used to be able to enter the name of any hotel in the world and if it had a website it probably was the first or second listing on google. Now I often enter hotel names and scan through dozens of pages of links and never can find a actual link to the direct website. Maybe that's no cause for concern for you, but it is for me. The basic complaint is that google seems to be less user friendly that it used to be. Now it seems to be more a source of advertising than it is for simple, concise information.

Let me chime in with a resounding, YEAH, Google's gotten to be a huge p.i.t.a. particularly re: hotels. I've found a few get-arounds, including finding the corporate name of chains and bookmarking their home website (e.g. http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/6c/home for the Holiday Inn/Six Continents group) but that's no help with the small independents. One thing to avoid for sure is using the word "hotel" or "inn" in the search phrase you use. Going to the Chamber of Commerce for the given city actually is a good ploy. I also use Travelocity to locate the hotel sometimes and then use the phone number or the address as the search term, instead of the name of the place.

I suggest we let Google know that we're defecting for this reason. When the sponsored websites were clearly marked and segregated, I didn't mind so much. Now, I scan the first page and if the name of the hotel isn't right after the www. in the link, I try something else.

GoTravel,
I hadn't quiet understood the problem you were having until I experimented Googleing a web page for the same hotel you were searching for.
Guess it's been a while since I tried to search for information about a hotel web site that I hadn't already book marked.
Yes, the new Google indexing policy is challenging for those of us who know the specific hotel site we're looking for and would prefer not to have to wade through pages of ads to find it.

Use Yahoo. The list of sponsored sites is clearly marked and only a few sites long. Below that is the list of regular sites. Much easier than Google.