13 ms·

TripAdvisor cuts hundreds of jobs after Google competition bites

220 points by b3n 7y ago

mfer 7y ago
Google controls search. Google launches a competitor to a web service presented through search. Competitor takes enough of a hit layoffs are needed. This screams of a problem. Especially for consumers and a competitive market. The kind of thing that traditionally caused governments to step in.
- the_reformation 7y ago
  Google launched a service consumers preferred. What's the issue? That they have a sustained competitive advantage?
  - throwawaybbb 7y ago
    Imagine if 70% of roads were privately owned by one company. That company, call it roadle, opened a restaurant chain. There is free parking in front of all roadle restaurants. There are always roadworks around all non roadle restaurants. This is what search is like today.
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      Not at all the same comparison. People that don't like Google or their additions to organic search results can simply switch to another competitor.
      - mamurphy 7y ago
        >Not at all the same comparison. No, their comparison was perfect! They said roadle owned 70% of roads, not all of them. Sure, businesses can hope that they get their traffic from non-Google search, but if customers are going to Google for 70+% of search, that's a doomed business strategy. Their point isn't that Google is bad for consumers, it's that it's unfair for businesses if Google is driving all the search to its own properties that you are trying to compete with.
        ironmagma 7y ago
        Google is essentially a piece of international infrastructure at this point. If it went out of existence, the productivity of millions of people would take at least a minor nose dive and the funnels for user conversion for businesses would change drastically overnight leading to a macroscopic restructuring of business priorities.
    - trianglem 7y ago
      That analogy does not work. It’s more like google is a telephone directory.
    - unishark 7y ago
      The problem with this analogy is it implies people are forced to use roadle if they want to get to 70% of places. They can only allow their own destinations and cease to be a search engine at all. However in this case any competitor can produce an equally complete road system. This is why roadle has to constantly add additional services to entice drivers. Otherwise they're a commodity. To treat it like a private-road dystopia is to deprive customers of the benefits of competition in this market.
  - grey-area 7y ago
    That's not what happened. Google abused their monopoly in search to present ads and their own results first (google places, hotel ads, search ads all come before organic results).
- buboard 7y ago
  this is self correcting. sites will just block google from stealing their content. inconvenient, but people can't have everything for free, forever
- jeromebaek 7y ago
  this reeks of internal political problems. this isn't good for google nor for google's partners. the only reason they would autocannibalize is if there are too many engineers sitting around doing almost nothing so they start inventing problems to solve.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
That's a bummer. I've found that TripAdvisor reviews tend to have a higher signal to noise ratio than some other sites (including Google's own reviews, where you can tell a lot of the reviews are just being cranked out so that power users can get points and "level up")
- rapnie 7y ago
  They are no angels either, or at least their daughter company. Two weeks ago TheFork featured in Dutch TV program Rambam where they proved that they boost restaurant ratings. They listed their own fake restaurant (possible, no problem) and gave their own reviews, trying to become lowest rated in the ranking. Giving rebates on couverts may boost your ranking too. Restaurant owners interviewed are not too happy as well. They feel forced to subscribe because of popularity of the site, but have to pay 2 euro per person per reservation. Also it happens that without their knowledge TheFork arranges the Reservation button on Google search, so they flow through their platform. edit: To clarify the boosting. If according to ratings the average should be a 5.2 then TheFork would up that and make it e.g. a 6.5
  - close04 7y ago
    I'm sure all services have similar problems so it's just a matter of picking your poison. The problem is that Google is so synonymous with search that people have forgotten they're a business. They expect the "best/most relevant" search results. Instead they get biased ones that tend to favor Google. And most will just take that as the best result. And Google does its best to obscure the fact that the search is anything but fair (see also the recent move to blur the lines between paid ad results and organic search results). To most it just looks like the super smart algorithm found exactly what they needed. In reality it just found more Google. So maybe the problem is not necessarily Google but people's expectations. Nobody asks a McDonald's clerk what the best burger is thinking they'll get a fair comparison with Burger King’s offer. They do expect this from a Google search.
  - conradfr 7y ago
    I used to work on the search team at TheFork years ago (we were already a TripAdvisor subsidiary) and don't know about the current practices but back then there was no foul play about the ratings, which is not even the default sorting on the site. Also, not specifically related to TheFork (because I don't remember...), do all ratings should always have the same weight? Are old ratings as relevant as newer? If you want to book a romantic dinner are ratings from groups as relevant as the ones from other couples? Is a new restaurant with two reviews at 7/10 average the same as another one with 200 reviews at 7/10 average ? There's more to it than first apparent. Example: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating....
superbrane 7y ago
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.
- superbrane 7y ago
  1 more thought on this - Expedia and Booking are next on their menu...
  - sct202 7y ago
    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.
    - nemothekid 7y ago
      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.
      - what_ever 7y ago
        Tbh, AirBnB is pretty bad to use itself. Not b.com bad but still shouldn't be used as an example.
        epa 7y ago
        Can you elaborate why you think they are bad?
    - arein2 7y ago
CodeSheikh 7y ago
"...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.
- mythrwy 7y ago
  TripAdvisor was listed in the SP500 until late last December. Right there besides Caterpillar and Halliburton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies But otherwise ya. They are a website with content, reviews etc.
- kevinstubbs 7y ago
  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 doing research, prototyping, and otherwise developing products that haven't/may never see the light of day. Furthermore, they seem to do a lot of marketing which for them is the obvious stuff like online advertising (probably in-house team), conferences, and I'm guessing also local events. They also do non-obvious stuff such as branding one of little shops inside the Toronto Pearson International Airport [1]. Finally, looking at LinkedIn, here's the breakdown of employees. 1,100 sales 939 engineering 768 operations 652 bizdev and so on. Full screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId Obviously, there must be some overlap in job functions here, otherwise people are over-reporting that they are employees at the company (LinkedIn claims 5,679 employees). 160 people doing finance doesn't make sense, for instance (well at least imo). The only conclusion I can make from this data is that they aren't having thousands of people working on just the main website. I'm inclined to guess that they ARE probably bloated, but without knowing anything besides some marketing copy for their other projects, it's hard to say with any confidence. [0] https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking [1] https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto-airport-shops/tripadvisor-store-t1-after-canada-d20 https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto...
threeseed 7y ago
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.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  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 business. It's pretty scary how much of the digital high streets Google has ruthlessly stolen from us all, and imposing a huge tax for doing pretty much sod all. I occasionally wonder if anyone would every have the balls to nationalise the search engine, it should be a public utility, not infested with ads covering 90% of the first page as it's become. I'm even semi-serious :) At the very least I wouldn't mind a nice ruling that Google are now deceptively calling themselves a search engine, and that they can now only show one ad per 10 real results per page.
  - h2odragon 7y ago
    "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.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      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.
dba7dba 7y ago
Any business without physical inventory that can be automated in a way to sell/buy should really worry about Google. Eventually Google will come for that market as their new crop of managers/execs will want to make the number to get their bonus and move up the ladder. I know a guy who used to work at tripadvisor years ago. At the time Google was trying to start up their own hotel search business but they didn't have the reviews. So Google was initially using reviews submitted to tripadvisor by tripadvisor's reviews. I believe there had been prior agreement for Google to use tripadvisor's reviews for a fee/beter-search-ranking in return? Anyhow, tripadivisor didn't like what was happening so was in the process of telling google that they will stop the arrangement. And a google exec in the meeting threatened tripadivisor execs that google will lower tripadivisor in the search results, if tripadvisor did stop the arrangement. This bit was apparently shared in a regularly scheduled company wide meeting.
- bobbiechen 7y ago
  There's a similar story from Jeremy Stoppelman about Google scraping Yelp content in 2010 even though their licensing agreement ended in 2007. Source is the Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in 2011 on Google's dominance, the BI link below includes the exhibits as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    I'm sure they'll get fined $1M in 2036 or something. That'll even it all out.
    - objektif 7y ago
      There is a name for that right? "Be fucking evil if it doesn't cost much" or something like that.
- eropple 7y ago
  I don’t remember exactly how it was shared at Trip, and I think it was “Google Travel” or something rather than just a hotel booking platform, but that story generally lines up with my recollections from 2011-2012. Reading this thread made it come to mind again and I was wondering how it had turned out...
rblatz 7y ago
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 children, back-packing, splurging on vacation, would be helpful criteria to make the reviews more relevant and informative to me.
- neves 7y ago
  I like more personal contact, nature and simplicity than amenities. I always list the reviews from worst to best. If the bad reviews says things like "there are no TV in the room" I just ignore it. You must read the review, specially the bad ones instead of just counting the stars.
- ym705 7y ago
  check out what i'm making at https://dokomaps.com 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
  - Applethief 7y ago
    Very nice site!
neves 7y ago
I really prefer TripAdvisor data and reviews, but it is really difficult to compete to a monopoly. Google also is better at search and integrates better with their own service. If at least they would allow me to download any city data in advance in their app. It used be possible to download the main cities in advance, but now you must have internet always on. They think that in any country you have internet everywhere.
- eropple 7y ago
  Interestingly enough, I’m in Italy this week and here Apple Maps sources most of its data from TripAdvisor. I’ve visited their site (clicks on Maps go to it) more this week than in the last five years. They’ve been a lot more helpful than Yelp reviews etc., too.
ronilan 7y ago
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 a db with keyword variations in mind, constantly refreshing content with user submissions, and, the killer, buying links to influence Google’s naive ranking methods (which quickly evolved this to buying entire sites for their SEO potential). The billion dollar public valuation is entirely the result of a decade long SEO play. (Source: was in online travel related business at the time. Was the first to buy links form Matt at SeatGuru, later acquired by TripAdvisor) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006
- mambojumbo 7y ago
  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.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    I learned something from ronilans comment.
- ProAm 7y ago
  The truth is most companies tend to last ~20 years (from mom and pop to larger ones) if they are successful. You're lucky if you make it further. This is one of those that isn't going to last much further.
  - Marazan 7y ago
jbverschoor 7y ago
The problem is not google. It’s trip advisor itself. It’s simply not helpful anymore. Fake reviews, and they’re pushing paid events etc using dark patterns.. it wasn’t like that some years ago Love the lonely planet
- pradn 7y ago
  Whenever I want to look up the highlights of a place, I look up it's Lonely Planet page. They are written well and have good pictures. The way to compete against a million random reviewers is by upping quality and forming a brand. In some places, Lonely Planet is the only company providing accurate and complete information. It's marvelous.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    Unfortunately Lonely Planet's old business model of getting people to pay for content itself has basically stopped working now that there's a million free digital competitors, and they've yet to come up with a replacement that does.
    - jbverschoor 7y ago
      The app is really really cheap. Fair to say underpriced, especially compared to the books. No ads. Quality content. A good structure about essentials and the neighborhoods.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- glofish 7y ago
  This! I used to visit Tripadvisor a lot, but then, with time the site became less and less useful - always pushing the next tour, next paid event, complete disregard to what the site was supposed to be, advice about trips Hence I stopped visiting altogether.
- cake 7y ago
  Yes trip advisor has become irrelevant, in the beginning you could rely on the ratings. Now almost everyone has 4+ stars. I find Google ratings slighly better.
eggie5 7y ago
this killed Trivago too
- travelbyphone 7y ago
  I see a ton of Trivago ads on tv for many years now, but I never used it, nor do I ever heard of a friend using it or recommending it
  - Maxious 7y ago
    > The [Federal Court of Australia] ruled that from at least December 2016, Trivago misled consumers by representing its website would quickly and easily help users identify the cheapest rates available for a given hotel. > In fact, Trivago used an algorithm which placed significant weight on which online hotel booking site paid Trivago the highest cost-per-click fee in determining its website rankings and often did not highlight the cheapest rates for consumers. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consumers-about-hotel-room-rates https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consume...
buboard 7y ago
why do people keep having their content for free for google to use? it doesn't make sense anymore. the google web social contract is broken, there is no tit for tat anymore. only paywall sites get it right now.
- Hokusai 7y ago
  I have added from pictures to missing places into Google. For me, the tit for tat is to help other travellers to find interesting places, to not get lost or to know what to expect when in a foreign country/city. But, I always contribute similar content to Wikipedia/Wikicommons. Because I see that as a more fitting philosophy for sharing knowledge. The type of information and the format is not the same, thou. Google is just practical. It is frustrating to plan a visit to a museum in a city that I will spend one day to find out that has been closed for half a year. So, I agree as I have my own self-doubts about giving things for free to Google when they are going to use that data to send me or others more targeted advertisements.
  - buboard 7y ago
    i probably should clarify, i was referring to businesses, not people. Right now, opening up your website to google, is basically an invitation to steal your content. Paywalls are the only way to keep them from doing it.
- pxtail 7y ago
  because grim reality is that there is no other way around this. And the paywalled sites argument - even they are providing their content to google, it's just the user who gets paywall. Another question is if this does even work - maybe for top 50 sites? Even here on HN where wealthy readers are flexing with their expensive cars, houses, earnings etc. at the same time when paywalled article appears it is circumvented by outline/archive link or criticized.
  - buboard 7y ago
    perhaps if, however, tripadvisor had not been opening its content for free to google, but took it behind a signup-wall (like facebook does), they would have trained users to use their own site instead of google for trip information. It's doable, because the use case of their website is quite specific (i've only used the tripadvisor app while traveling). If they didn't make it so easy for google to impersonate them, they might have had a more loyal, monetizable audience. It's slightly inconvenient for users, but the alternative nowadays is complete destruction of the company.
s3r3nity 7y ago
> Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads. This has forced many companies, including TripAdvisor, to buy more ads from the search giant to keep online traffic flowing. That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal repercussions. Two-birds, one stone.
- dannyr 7y ago
  >That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal repercussions. Two-birds, one stone. Crazy thing is they are using their competitors money to wipe away competition.
  - buboard 7y ago
    three birds
jorblumesea 7y ago
Pretty much every site that depends on Google search and organic traffic is in trouble. Trip Advisor, Expedia, Booking.com, most OTAs. Their lunch is being eaten.
- toephu2 7y ago
  Yup, next up: Yelp. Personally I stopped using TripAdvisor in favor of Google Maps. Also stopped using Yelp in favor of Google Maps. It's all integrated so nicely, no need to open another app for reviews.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    I'm as surprised as anyone, but Yelp seems to be holding on. G's reviews just aren't as good, and don't seem to be as critical. Not sure if it's just easier to game? Pretty much everything on Google maps is a 4.0.
    - dannyr 7y ago
      Yelp hasn't grown outside the US though while Google Maps/Local has gotten bigger worldwide.
systematical 7y ago
Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But back to the point. There really isn't anything wrong with what they are doing, they are a typical business. Again, nothing wrong with that. They do stuff for their own self-interest. They are not your friends. Organic search results get in the way of advertising.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  There is something wrong with a monopoly, it's just been so long since any of it has been enforced that people have forgotten. Hopefully that changes soon.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...
  - troysand 7y ago
    Same applies to Microsoft as well. Remember Ami Pro, WordPerfect?
    - blackrock 7y ago
      Isn’t Word Perfect still used in the legal profession, because of how it aligns the text with precision during print out? (Or something like that.)
  - mjevans 7y ago
milkers 7y ago
How can I read this article, it is behind a paywall?
- tim333 7y ago
  Try deleting cookies? (click the padlock by the url in Chrome)
eljimmy 7y ago
Oddly enough they were head-hunting super intensely last year. I wonder if they were doing that to hire devs for lower pay in order to let go more senior individuals to save money...
vassy 7y ago
I eat out and travel a lot, I rarely use TripAdvisor anymore. When I want to find a decent restaurant nearby I open Google Maps, for hotels booking.com reviews haven't failed me yet. I mostly use TripAdvisor when I want to be more specific with the reviews eg. filter by couples in winter

220 points by b3n 7y ago

mfer 7y ago

Google controls search. Google launches a competitor to a web service presented through search. Competitor takes enough of a hit layoffs are needed. This screams of a problem. Especially for consumers and a competitive market. The kind of thing that traditionally caused governments to step in.

the_reformation 7y ago
Google launched a service consumers preferred. What's the issue? That they have a sustained competitive advantage?
- throwawaybbb 7y ago
  Imagine if 70% of roads were privately owned by one company. That company, call it roadle, opened a restaurant chain. There is free parking in front of all roadle restaurants. There are always roadworks around all non roadle restaurants. This is what search is like today.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    Not at all the same comparison. People that don't like Google or their additions to organic search results can simply switch to another competitor.
    - mamurphy 7y ago
      >Not at all the same comparison. No, their comparison was perfect! They said roadle owned 70% of roads, not all of them. Sure, businesses can hope that they get their traffic from non-Google search, but if customers are going to Google for 70+% of search, that's a doomed business strategy. Their point isn't that Google is bad for consumers, it's that it's unfair for businesses if Google is driving all the search to its own properties that you are trying to compete with.
      - ironmagma 7y ago
        Google is essentially a piece of international infrastructure at this point. If it went out of existence, the productivity of millions of people would take at least a minor nose dive and the funnels for user conversion for businesses would change drastically overnight leading to a macroscopic restructuring of business priorities.
  - trianglem 7y ago
    That analogy does not work. It’s more like google is a telephone directory.
  - unishark 7y ago
    The problem with this analogy is it implies people are forced to use roadle if they want to get to 70% of places. They can only allow their own destinations and cease to be a search engine at all. However in this case any competitor can produce an equally complete road system. This is why roadle has to constantly add additional services to entice drivers. Otherwise they're a commodity. To treat it like a private-road dystopia is to deprive customers of the benefits of competition in this market.
- grey-area 7y ago
  That's not what happened. Google abused their monopoly in search to present ads and their own results first (google places, hotel ads, search ads all come before organic results).
buboard 7y ago
this is self correcting. sites will just block google from stealing their content. inconvenient, but people can't have everything for free, forever
jeromebaek 7y ago
this reeks of internal political problems. this isn't good for google nor for google's partners. the only reason they would autocannibalize is if there are too many engineers sitting around doing almost nothing so they start inventing problems to solve.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

That's a bummer. I've found that TripAdvisor reviews tend to have a higher signal to noise ratio than some other sites (including Google's own reviews, where you can tell a lot of the reviews are just being cranked out so that power users can get points and "level up")

rapnie 7y ago
They are no angels either, or at least their daughter company. Two weeks ago TheFork featured in Dutch TV program Rambam where they proved that they boost restaurant ratings. They listed their own fake restaurant (possible, no problem) and gave their own reviews, trying to become lowest rated in the ranking. Giving rebates on couverts may boost your ranking too. Restaurant owners interviewed are not too happy as well. They feel forced to subscribe because of popularity of the site, but have to pay 2 euro per person per reservation. Also it happens that without their knowledge TheFork arranges the Reservation button on Google search, so they flow through their platform. edit: To clarify the boosting. If according to ratings the average should be a 5.2 then TheFork would up that and make it e.g. a 6.5
- close04 7y ago
  I'm sure all services have similar problems so it's just a matter of picking your poison. The problem is that Google is so synonymous with search that people have forgotten they're a business. They expect the "best/most relevant" search results. Instead they get biased ones that tend to favor Google. And most will just take that as the best result. And Google does its best to obscure the fact that the search is anything but fair (see also the recent move to blur the lines between paid ad results and organic search results). To most it just looks like the super smart algorithm found exactly what they needed. In reality it just found more Google. So maybe the problem is not necessarily Google but people's expectations. Nobody asks a McDonald's clerk what the best burger is thinking they'll get a fair comparison with Burger King’s offer. They do expect this from a Google search.
- conradfr 7y ago
  I used to work on the search team at TheFork years ago (we were already a TripAdvisor subsidiary) and don't know about the current practices but back then there was no foul play about the ratings, which is not even the default sorting on the site. Also, not specifically related to TheFork (because I don't remember...), do all ratings should always have the same weight? Are old ratings as relevant as newer? If you want to book a romantic dinner are ratings from groups as relevant as the ones from other couples? Is a new restaurant with two reviews at 7/10 average the same as another one with 200 reviews at 7/10 average ? There's more to it than first apparent. Example: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating....

superbrane 7y ago

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.

superbrane 7y ago
1 more thought on this - Expedia and Booking are next on their menu...
- sct202 7y ago
  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.
  - nemothekid 7y ago
    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.
    - what_ever 7y ago
      Tbh, AirBnB is pretty bad to use itself. Not b.com bad but still shouldn't be used as an example.
      - epa 7y ago
        Can you elaborate why you think they are bad?
  - arein2 7y ago

CodeSheikh 7y ago

"...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.

mythrwy 7y ago
TripAdvisor was listed in the SP500 until late last December. Right there besides Caterpillar and Halliburton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies But otherwise ya. They are a website with content, reviews etc.
kevinstubbs 7y ago
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 doing research, prototyping, and otherwise developing products that haven't/may never see the light of day. Furthermore, they seem to do a lot of marketing which for them is the obvious stuff like online advertising (probably in-house team), conferences, and I'm guessing also local events. They also do non-obvious stuff such as branding one of little shops inside the Toronto Pearson International Airport [1]. Finally, looking at LinkedIn, here's the breakdown of employees. 1,100 sales 939 engineering 768 operations 652 bizdev and so on. Full screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId https://imgur.com/a/JCoibId Obviously, there must be some overlap in job functions here, otherwise people are over-reporting that they are employees at the company (LinkedIn claims 5,679 employees). 160 people doing finance doesn't make sense, for instance (well at least imo). The only conclusion I can make from this data is that they aren't having thousands of people working on just the main website. I'm inclined to guess that they ARE probably bloated, but without knowing anything besides some marketing copy for their other projects, it's hard to say with any confidence. [0] https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking https://www.tripadvisor.com/InstantBooking [1] https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto-airport-shops/tripadvisor-store-t1-after-canada-d20 https://www.torontopearson.com/en/while-you-are-here/toronto...

threeseed 7y ago

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.

mattmanser 7y ago
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 business. It's pretty scary how much of the digital high streets Google has ruthlessly stolen from us all, and imposing a huge tax for doing pretty much sod all. I occasionally wonder if anyone would every have the balls to nationalise the search engine, it should be a public utility, not infested with ads covering 90% of the first page as it's become. I'm even semi-serious :) At the very least I wouldn't mind a nice ruling that Google are now deceptively calling themselves a search engine, and that they can now only show one ad per 10 real results per page.
- h2odragon 7y ago
  "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.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    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.

dba7dba 7y ago

Any business without physical inventory that can be automated in a way to sell/buy should really worry about Google. Eventually Google will come for that market as their new crop of managers/execs will want to make the number to get their bonus and move up the ladder. I know a guy who used to work at tripadvisor years ago. At the time Google was trying to start up their own hotel search business but they didn't have the reviews. So Google was initially using reviews submitted to tripadvisor by tripadvisor's reviews. I believe there had been prior agreement for Google to use tripadvisor's reviews for a fee/beter-search-ranking in return? Anyhow, tripadivisor didn't like what was happening so was in the process of telling google that they will stop the arrangement. And a google exec in the meeting threatened tripadivisor execs that google will lower tripadivisor in the search results, if tripadvisor did stop the arrangement. This bit was apparently shared in a regularly scheduled company wide meeting.

bobbiechen 7y ago
There's a similar story from Jeremy Stoppelman about Google scraping Yelp content in 2010 even though their licensing agreement ended in 2007. Source is the Senate Antitrust Committee hearing in 2011 on Google's dominance, the BI link below includes the exhibits as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-ceo-on-google-2011-9
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  I'm sure they'll get fined $1M in 2036 or something. That'll even it all out.
  - objektif 7y ago
    There is a name for that right? "Be fucking evil if it doesn't cost much" or something like that.
eropple 7y ago
I don’t remember exactly how it was shared at Trip, and I think it was “Google Travel” or something rather than just a hotel booking platform, but that story generally lines up with my recollections from 2011-2012. Reading this thread made it come to mind again and I was wondering how it had turned out...

rblatz 7y ago

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 children, back-packing, splurging on vacation, would be helpful criteria to make the reviews more relevant and informative to me.

neves 7y ago
I like more personal contact, nature and simplicity than amenities. I always list the reviews from worst to best. If the bad reviews says things like "there are no TV in the room" I just ignore it. You must read the review, specially the bad ones instead of just counting the stars.
ym705 7y ago
check out what i'm making at https://dokomaps.com 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
- Applethief 7y ago
  Very nice site!

neves 7y ago

I really prefer TripAdvisor data and reviews, but it is really difficult to compete to a monopoly. Google also is better at search and integrates better with their own service. If at least they would allow me to download any city data in advance in their app. It used be possible to download the main cities in advance, but now you must have internet always on. They think that in any country you have internet everywhere.

eropple 7y ago
Interestingly enough, I’m in Italy this week and here Apple Maps sources most of its data from TripAdvisor. I’ve visited their site (clicks on Maps go to it) more this week than in the last five years. They’ve been a lot more helpful than Yelp reviews etc., too.

ronilan 7y ago

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 a db with keyword variations in mind, constantly refreshing content with user submissions, and, the killer, buying links to influence Google’s naive ranking methods (which quickly evolved this to buying entire sites for their SEO potential). The billion dollar public valuation is entirely the result of a decade long SEO play. (Source: was in online travel related business at the time. Was the first to buy links form Matt at SeatGuru, later acquired by TripAdvisor) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21516006

mambojumbo 7y ago
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.
- jshevek 7y ago
  I learned something from ronilans comment.
ProAm 7y ago
The truth is most companies tend to last ~20 years (from mom and pop to larger ones) if they are successful. You're lucky if you make it further. This is one of those that isn't going to last much further.
- Marazan 7y ago

jbverschoor 7y ago

The problem is not google. It’s trip advisor itself. It’s simply not helpful anymore. Fake reviews, and they’re pushing paid events etc using dark patterns.. it wasn’t like that some years ago Love the lonely planet

pradn 7y ago
Whenever I want to look up the highlights of a place, I look up it's Lonely Planet page. They are written well and have good pictures. The way to compete against a million random reviewers is by upping quality and forming a brand. In some places, Lonely Planet is the only company providing accurate and complete information. It's marvelous.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Unfortunately Lonely Planet's old business model of getting people to pay for content itself has basically stopped working now that there's a million free digital competitors, and they've yet to come up with a replacement that does.
  - jbverschoor 7y ago
    The app is really really cheap. Fair to say underpriced, especially compared to the books. No ads. Quality content. A good structure about essentials and the neighborhoods.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
glofish 7y ago
This! I used to visit Tripadvisor a lot, but then, with time the site became less and less useful - always pushing the next tour, next paid event, complete disregard to what the site was supposed to be, advice about trips Hence I stopped visiting altogether.
cake 7y ago
Yes trip advisor has become irrelevant, in the beginning you could rely on the ratings. Now almost everyone has 4+ stars. I find Google ratings slighly better.

eggie5 7y ago

this killed Trivago too

travelbyphone 7y ago
I see a ton of Trivago ads on tv for many years now, but I never used it, nor do I ever heard of a friend using it or recommending it
- Maxious 7y ago
  > The [Federal Court of Australia] ruled that from at least December 2016, Trivago misled consumers by representing its website would quickly and easily help users identify the cheapest rates available for a given hotel. > In fact, Trivago used an algorithm which placed significant weight on which online hotel booking site paid Trivago the highest cost-per-click fee in determining its website rankings and often did not highlight the cheapest rates for consumers. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consumers-about-hotel-room-rates https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/trivago-misled-consume...

buboard 7y ago

why do people keep having their content for free for google to use? it doesn't make sense anymore. the google web social contract is broken, there is no tit for tat anymore. only paywall sites get it right now.

Hokusai 7y ago
I have added from pictures to missing places into Google. For me, the tit for tat is to help other travellers to find interesting places, to not get lost or to know what to expect when in a foreign country/city. But, I always contribute similar content to Wikipedia/Wikicommons. Because I see that as a more fitting philosophy for sharing knowledge. The type of information and the format is not the same, thou. Google is just practical. It is frustrating to plan a visit to a museum in a city that I will spend one day to find out that has been closed for half a year. So, I agree as I have my own self-doubts about giving things for free to Google when they are going to use that data to send me or others more targeted advertisements.
- buboard 7y ago
  i probably should clarify, i was referring to businesses, not people. Right now, opening up your website to google, is basically an invitation to steal your content. Paywalls are the only way to keep them from doing it.
pxtail 7y ago
because grim reality is that there is no other way around this. And the paywalled sites argument - even they are providing their content to google, it's just the user who gets paywall. Another question is if this does even work - maybe for top 50 sites? Even here on HN where wealthy readers are flexing with their expensive cars, houses, earnings etc. at the same time when paywalled article appears it is circumvented by outline/archive link or criticized.
- buboard 7y ago
  perhaps if, however, tripadvisor had not been opening its content for free to google, but took it behind a signup-wall (like facebook does), they would have trained users to use their own site instead of google for trip information. It's doable, because the use case of their website is quite specific (i've only used the tripadvisor app while traveling). If they didn't make it so easy for google to impersonate them, they might have had a more loyal, monetizable audience. It's slightly inconvenient for users, but the alternative nowadays is complete destruction of the company.

s3r3nity 7y ago

> Google has also crammed the top of its mobile search results with more ads. This has forced many companies, including TripAdvisor, to buy more ads from the search giant to keep online traffic flowing. That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal repercussions. Two-birds, one stone.

dannyr 7y ago
>That seems wild to me: not only does Google get more $ from ads, but they have this massive power to wipe out competitors this way, with minimal repercussions. Two-birds, one stone. Crazy thing is they are using their competitors money to wipe away competition.
- buboard 7y ago
  three birds

jorblumesea 7y ago

Pretty much every site that depends on Google search and organic traffic is in trouble. Trip Advisor, Expedia, Booking.com, most OTAs. Their lunch is being eaten.

toephu2 7y ago
Yup, next up: Yelp. Personally I stopped using TripAdvisor in favor of Google Maps. Also stopped using Yelp in favor of Google Maps. It's all integrated so nicely, no need to open another app for reviews.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  I'm as surprised as anyone, but Yelp seems to be holding on. G's reviews just aren't as good, and don't seem to be as critical. Not sure if it's just easier to game? Pretty much everything on Google maps is a 4.0.
  - dannyr 7y ago
    Yelp hasn't grown outside the US though while Google Maps/Local has gotten bigger worldwide.

systematical 7y ago

Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it. That shit is either a company you built or a product of theirs that you used. They are not a search company, they are a conglomerate. They'll buy you or break you. It's funny when they fail though isn't it? Remember Google+? Who lead that initiative? What a travesty that was. Outside of Gmail, Google's UIs really do suck. But back to the point. There really isn't anything wrong with what they are doing, they are a typical business. Again, nothing wrong with that. They do stuff for their own self-interest. They are not your friends. Organic search results get in the way of advertising.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
There is something wrong with a monopoly, it's just been so long since any of it has been enforced that people have forgotten. Hopefully that changes soon.
Johnny555 7y ago
Google is pretty much taking your shit nowadays and there is nothing you can do about it That sounds like Amazon -- if you've got a hot selling product on Amazon, you can expect them to copy it and start selling it under the Amazon brand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...
- troysand 7y ago
  Same applies to Microsoft as well. Remember Ami Pro, WordPerfect?
  - blackrock 7y ago
    Isn’t Word Perfect still used in the legal profession, because of how it aligns the text with precision during print out? (Or something like that.)
- mjevans 7y ago

milkers 7y ago

How can I read this article, it is behind a paywall?

tim333 7y ago
Try deleting cookies? (click the padlock by the url in Chrome)

eljimmy 7y ago

Oddly enough they were head-hunting super intensely last year. I wonder if they were doing that to hire devs for lower pay in order to let go more senior individuals to save money...

vassy 7y ago

I eat out and travel a lot, I rarely use TripAdvisor anymore. When I want to find a decent restaurant nearby I open Google Maps, for hotels booking.com reviews haven't failed me yet. I mostly use TripAdvisor when I want to be more specific with the reviews eg. filter by couples in winter