Category Archives: Google

It's time to throw away previous models of online distribution! Tomahawk Director and tourism marketing expert Gina Paladini presents the drastic changes in online distribution for tourism, and how your business can stay ahead of the curve.

Download the whitepaper as a PDF

Let’s start by looking back to the 1990 era of travel distribution.

“Those were the days.” The distribution chain was an easy, single flat line with the novel addition of a supplier having their first website.

Today the available distribution "chain" is more like a bicycle wheel with spokes than a chain!\

The increase of distribution channels options requires an deep understanding of your customers, and which channels are best for each stage of the travel purchase...

Over the past month Google has changed the way Adwords is displayed on desktop search results. Have you noticed the difference yet? Here's how the changes may affect your business.

What changed?

1. No more text ads shown on the right-hand side.
2. Up to four ads are now shown above organic (natural) search results – when previously the maximum was three.
3. Three ads are also now shown at the bottom of the page.
4. This means the number of maximum text ads has been reduced to seven whereas before there could be 11.

Why did it change?

Many people will say the answer is money, but by removing the ads on the right, Google has created a cleaner user experience that is more consistent with how mobile search is displayed. The right-hand space is also now used for other...

Learn how to recapture visitors who have abandoned your website and turn them into bookings!

Introducing New and Returning Traffic

There are two types of traffic that comes to your website: “new” and “returning”. If you have the chance, login to Google Analytics and take a look under Audience > Behaviour. How does your new and returning traffic compare?

Commonly, you’ll find your returning traffic stays on your website longer, viewing more pages. This is because the people who have come back for another look are those who are more interested in your product or service. Hence, your chances of converting returning traffic into a lead or sale is higher than with new traffic.

Therefore it makes sense to increase your returning traffic by encouraging more visitors back...

We’re just a few short months away from professional virtual reality (VR) headsets to hit the consumer market in a storm of holiday promotions, and the future is here.

Google Cardboard  - Free Consumer VR

Google Cardboard, an approximately $20 box frame with plastic lenses, went on sale this year as a proving ground for this new technology and it’s been a wild success. Google brings the concept to anyone who wants to explore the new tech, with free designs for the cardboard headset also available on their website. Reminiscent of the red plastic View-Masters of the late 1980’s, these cardboard boxes have a simple slot for a cell phone. All you have to do is download a VR app to a smartphone and the world of virtual reality is in your hands. 

You may have noticed lately that there has been an increasing amount of odd-looking referral websites cropping up in your Google Analytics reports. This is known as referral spam.

Whilst this traffic doesn’t normally harm your website, it can skew your web traffic analytics because they often have a low visit duration and high bounce rate (yuk!).

There are three types of spam traffic - here’s what it is about and how to deal with it. Maybe grab a cuppa tea first because, let’s be honest, this isn’t the most exciting thing you’ll ever read.

1. Well behaved bots

A "bot" is an automated computer programme that visits your website to gather information, e.g. a search engine bot crawls your site to determine how to rank it in results.

Many of these bots – aka “spiders”...

All we seem to be reading about at the moment is the Google Mobile "Armageddon", the premise that on the 21 April if you are not mobile-friendly your website will be surreptitiously wiped off the face of search.

But it’s not quite all that dramatic. Let’s look at what is actually involved and whether you should be panicking just yet.

WHAT’S SO BIG ABOUT MOBILE?

We've been telling our tourism clients this for some time now: you must invest in a mobile-friendly (ideally responsive) website to succeed online. It’s no longer a “nice-to-have” - it’s a must-have.

• There are 1.08 billion smartphones in the world
• 50% of local search is done on a mobile device
• Nearly half of consumers say they won’t return to a website if it doesn’t load well on mobile

Last year...