As we pass 700 listings in the Google VR beta, I wanted to take a second to provide a very important update. This may sting a bit, but please read this thoroughly to understand the issue.
At this time, we are only allowing users with a Hosted Site (ie. the website engine managed by OwnerRez) to enter the Google VR beta. Yesterday, we reached out to the users who were already in the beta and were not using a Hosted Site, informed them of this decision, and removed their listings from the integration.
This is nothing something we want to do, but it has to be done to keep the integration in place.
Google measures what they call "Price Accuracy" for all the listings in a particular integration. We have access to a dashboard showing us the Price Accuracy of all users and listings from OwnerRez. Price Accuracy is a measurement of how many OwnerRez listings are showing the correct price on Google. Basically, Google wants to ensure that when a guest clicks through to the landing page (i.e. the user's actual website) to complete the booking, the price they see at the end is the same as what was advertised on Google back at the beginning. They also check for availability and branding to ensure the property looks the same and is still available if it is shown as available on Google.
Price Accuracy is a pivotal part of the integration. The integrating partner (OwnerRez) must maintain a high score or risk being delisted, and that means the entire integration, not just one or two specific listings.
The Price Accuracy score for OwnerRez is very low right now, even though we've been working with many individual users and listings for months to analyze and fix problem after problem. We have dropped into a range where our integration (the entire integration for all users) is at risk of being turned off completely. We don't believe it will come to that, but we have to take drastic actions to make large changes and then work towards bringing back new features after the pricing issues are first corrected.
So why is our Price Accuracy score so low? What's the problem?
As we do with all of our features, we built the Google VR integration with a lot of flexibility in mind. We designed the integration to highlight our user's brand and website - we wanted to give each of you the flexibility to showcase your own website so that it's a direct booking experience when the guest comes to your website from Google.
Our competitors don't do this. Our competitors use a single landing page for all traffic (like bookings.mypmssoftware.com), and force all guests to go through that same experience to book. This is what Google prefers and how their system is used to validate Price Accuracy. It's more of a hotel model where they assume all listings are the same. If you search on Google VR for vacation rentals that are listed by some of our competitors, you will see what I mean. Most of them go to a central booking landing page, not the PM's website. This allows Price Accuracy to be uniform and consistent across all listings.
Because our OwnerRez team built our integration to use each user's personal website, widget, or custom landing page, it means that Google has to check Price Accuracy in different ways for each and every user. This has created several problems:
1) Google's verification system is not designed to do this correctly. We have talked to Google exhaustively about many parsing/verification issues that are not actually correct. What they have deemed incorrect on one user's website may not be the same on another. In many cases, it comes down to presentation - do they believe that "this widget to book on" is the same as the listing that was on Google VR at the beginning?
2) In many cases, our OwnerRez users are using widgets or custom website landing pages in ways that do not correctly show the same rates or availability as what Google is looking for. When Google verifies the landing page, they don't see the same prices, so they drop the Price Accuracy score for that listing.
3) Google does not verify everyone, only a random handful of users day by day. As I mentioned above, Google's verification system assumes that all listings within an integration are the same booking experience. If 10 or 15 verifications fail overnight, they drop the score based on those failures and don't verify the other 500 listings. The next night, they may verify 10 or 15 others.
Solutions and steps forward...
It is imperative that we fix the Price Accuracy problem as quickly as possible. We have noticed that most problems come from those using widgets on other websites or custom landing pages because we cannot guarantee that those widgets and custom landing page experiences will show the correct pricing and availability when Google verifies that page. The users using our Hosted Website tend to be the most accurate as our hosted website booking and property pages use the same structure and forms. While they may be styled differently, the underlying property and booking pages are the same user by user, so our Hosted Website landing pages tend to verify at a much higher rate.
Our current roadmap is this:
1) As of this moment, only Hosted Website users will be allowed to participate in the Google VR integration. We have already removed those without a hosted site and are taking steps to put out a quick update so that new beta users don't see widget/custom landing page options.
2) Work with Google to monitor Price Accuracy scoring and restore our integration scores to excellent.
3) Develop a default landing page that all users can use (no matter your website situation) that uses an OwnerRez-provided guest form, which will accept Google VR traffic and ask the guest if they want to book after showing a standard landing page with charges. This will become the new default landing page option when turning on Google VR. All of the current beta users that were kicked out will be immediately added back using this landing page option.
4) Work to establish our own international verifications and vetting process to allow widget and custom landing page experiences. As with all OwnerRez features, we are deeply committed to promoting your brand and website experience, so we will work to get back to this option as time allows. It will be difficult and take time because of how Google verifies things, but it will remain on the roadmap as a goal for Google VR. However, in the meantime, using the default landing page (bullet 3 above) will make it so that all users can get their listings into Google VR without waiting for this.
I understand this will surprise some of you and create frustration. Please understand that this decision is about creating long-term stability in the Google VR integration and opening it up to as many as possible as soon as possible. This integration is unlike any other we've worked on over the years, but we are committed to making it a success.
I have a hosted website, also. Interested.
Thanks
If we switch to an OwnerRez hosted website will we still be eligible?
Hi Paul, I have a hosted website and want to be included in your beta. Dawna
I’d like to try the beta as well. I have a hosted website with you.
Repeated below as it stalled on submitting.
Hi Paul - I am still interested in participating in the beta using my OR hosted site.
If we switch to an OwnerRez hosted website will we still be eligible?
Yes, any hosted website will do. You could even keep your current website for everything else but create a hosted website in OwnerRez that is only used for the Google VR traffic. The hosted website just needs to:
It is difficult to understand how this was not laid out / understood at the outset of this nearly 10 months ago! Yes it stings somewhat.
We have a hosted website, with OR, willing to do anything needed to help get this past the post.
We are all falling way behind the other sites that are already integrated with Google vr. With bookings down seemingly across the board it would be good to see this avenue taken advange of ASAP.
It may make no difference, but we really do need the opportunity to find out.
It's been fun, but not that fun Team OR. We are exploring better solutions that are vetted and enabled.
Hello Paul,
I have a hosted website and would like to be included in the beta please. Thank you.
Adam
Hi Paul,
Thank you for the update. To clarify, do those with an OR hosted website experience delays with the Google VR platform?
If beta is now accepting new members with hosted websites we are definitely interested.
Thanks!
It's been fun, but not that fun Team OR. We are exploring better solutions that are vetted and enabled.
Us too!
Hi Paul, We have a hosted website. How do we get set up with Google Vacations?
Every person that is following this topic receives an email notification for every response here. Please email OR directly if you want to be included in beta or whatever or possibly create a different forum but can we please keep this for official updates? I’ve received 19 emails from this in 3 minutes.
I’d like to be included in the beta group as well with our hosted website. Be happy to help with pricing accuracy!
Joe
It is difficult to understand how this was not laid out / understood at the outset of this nearly 10 months ago! Yes it stings somewhat.
We have a hosted website, with OR, willing to do anything needed to help get this past the post.
We are all falling way behind the other sites that are already integrated with Google vr. With bookings down seemingly across the board it would be good to see this avenue taken advange of ASAP.It may make no difference, but we really do need the opportunity to find out.
Before hanging too many hopes on GVR, I'd suggest going to GVR as a traveler, and try to find anything. You may see how unfriendly the interface is (it is definitely geared toward hotels) and how difficult it is to use. Plus, the "paid" channel listings(such as booking . com or vrbo/aka blue pillow) are prioritized in results. To me it seems like Booking. com, only more outdated. And it is widely known that Booking .com interface is not a very good fit for most VRs.
It's been fun, but not that fun Team OR. We are exploring better solutions that are vetted and enabled.
Us too!
Curious if you think that harassing/badgering the OR team to go faster will endear you enough to them and make them add you to the beta group?
I’m sure they are trying to do this as efficiently as they can.
Personally, I don’t feel that Google VR is the answer to decreasing bookings. If people are counting on a significant increase in bookings, that would be a disappointment.
Personally, I don’t feel that Google VR is the answer to decreasing bookings. If people are counting on a significant increase in bookings, that would be a disappointment.
Bingo! As I stated in my comment above, peoples' hopes of GVR being bookings panacea may be largely misplaced, whether it is via OR or not.
Seriously, so annoying. This is blowing up our inbox while we are trying to run a business that is not even reliant on GVR. Is there a way to unsubscribe from this forum? Do I have to remove my upvote to do so?
What's with all the people talking about being in the beta? I thought that was the first rule of beta, you don't talk about the beta. 🤔
Edit: I see the box to keep following, you have to comment and uncheck it I guess.
Is there a way to unsubscribe from this forum? Do I have to remove my upvote to do so?
At the top of every forum topic, there's a "Watch/Stop Watching this Topic" button. Looks like this:
It might be a little buried on this one because we have a large pinned reply showing above that.
There is also a "My Profile" button on the forum home page that will take you to a page showing your posts, votes, and the topics you are watching:
