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.
There is a specific option of becoming an "official business" on Google which then allows you to have a listing that provides direct booking and reviews. It also serves to have you found on their front /landing pages when people google for a location.
BUT there are very specific criteria a business must fulfill before Google recognizes it as a business- and more specifically as a Vacation Rental Business allowable on Google:
see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177#zippy=%2Cineligible-businesses
https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/11946834
There are channel managers such as OR already doing this for their users by bundling them together to get onto Google Vacation Rentals. Look at GVR's support article They specifically list all of these competitors to Ownerrez that can currently get properties on GVR if you have fewer than 5,000 properties. Does OR not have 5,000 properties?
Goes onto say:
If you're already working with a connectivity partner that's not listed above, encourage them to follow the steps outlined in this guide. If you'd like to become a connectivity partner with Google, or if you think direct integration is the right path for you, follow the same steps to get started.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned.
It's very frustrating. It seems that OR has just made up their minds they don't want to connect us to Google Vacation Rentals, connects us to channels with little traffic and no bookings instead.
I can't go into further detail beyond what I've discussed before, but, this is not the case, and our discussions with Google are moving forward.
Okay, thanks for that info, Ken. It just seems mystifying to those of us non-techies who see a huge roster of other channel managers already hooked up, ones with totally inferior product to OwnerRez, why they have been able to get set up but not OwnerRez.
Curious if you were able to find another way to list on Google Vacation Rentals while maintaining OR as your PM system. We are in the same boat as we have multiple properties and we are being searched and found on Google now.
Not quite sure how this is not complete yet. GVR will be a major source of income for many, just as their flight program took off. It'd be best to get your clients into GVR as fast as possible to help us grow our income streams further. Google seems to provide a pretty comprehensive integration manual. Any ETA from the OR Team?
If you have fewer than 5,000 properties, we strongly recommend working with one of the connectivity providers listed below to get your properties shown on Google.
If you're already working with a connectivity partner that's not listed above, encourage them to follow the steps outlined in this guide. If you'd like to become a connectivity partner with Google, or if you think direct integration is the right path for you, follow the same steps to get started.
Why is OwnerRez needing to have ongoing discussions with Google about this over a period of several months while other inferior channel managers have long ago gotten their host customers connected with Google Vacation Rentals?
How much talking about this is necessary over all this time, and why have the other channel managers been able to connect without all the talking?
Has anyone looked into these for the sole purpose of GVR integration and not fully abandoning OR? I would pay a minimum subscription just to have it as you pointed out- it is definitely affecting bottom lines for direct bookings.
This has been answered. https://www.ownerreservations.com/forums/requests/google-vacation-rentals-connectivity-partner#68129
Does Google charge us a commission for each booking? When I looked into them way back when I don't think they did. That makes me wonder, what is in it for Google? Nothing they give for "free" comes without a price tag. Your emails, calendars, photos, drive, contacts, notes, search history, etc. are all mined for useful data they can sell to advertisers. They track you across the web courtesy of their free analytics platform, selling that information as well.
No, they want something. Hopefully, OR is not bound by an NDA/mNDA and can give us some more insight, but from Ken's responses, I'm assuming it's a very strong (m)NDA.
One Consideration: The other channel managers charge a lot more in fees that Owner Rez does. We had a client who wanted GVR for their house, and when I queried owner rez and the significant difference in fees was pointed out, I stopped asking.
One Consideration: The other channel managers charge a lot more in fees that Owner Rez does. We had a client who wanted GVR for their house, and when I queried owner rez and the significant difference in fees was pointed out, I stopped asking.
Yes, you're right about that.
I'm sure I'm not alone in loving OwnerRez and everyone I've had interactions with who works there.
Just not understanding what's going on with this one particular issue.
Agreed on the fees. Left Lodgify because of them and everything being UTC based and support being in Spain (and I'm in Los Angeles).
I don’t think beds24 does?
One Consideration: The other channel managers charge a lot more in fees that Owner Rez does. We had a client who wanted GVR for their house, and when I queried owner rez and the significant difference in fees was pointed out, I stopped asking.
Yes, you're right about that.
I'm sure I'm not alone in loving OwnerRez and everyone I've had interactions with who works there.
Just not understanding what's going on with this one particular issue.
this is what owner rez said to me: "when Google Vacation Rentals is ready for primetime, yes we will of course integrate with them. However, they are brand new to the market, and whenever google sees an opportunity to make money they throw their hat into the ring. Generally it seems they'll get bored and those ventures never come to full fruition. Hopefully GoogleVacation Rentals will be different, but only time will tell..." and then he discussed the fee difference with another channel partner that posts listings to GVR charging 5% of bookings, versus the fee-friendly model owner rez is.
this is what owner rez said to me: "when Google Vacation Rentals is ready for primetime, yes we will of course integrate with them. However, they are brand new to the market, and whenever google sees an opportunity to make money they throw their hat into the ring. Generally it seems they'll get bored and those ventures never come to full fruition. Hopefully GoogleVacation Rentals will be different, but only time will tell..." and then he discussed the fee difference with another channel partner that posts listings to GVR charging 5% of bookings, versus the fee-friendly model owner rez is.
Great point. Orkut and Google Plus come to mind
GVR may be free initially to get people on board but after they monopolize the market like they inevitably do with other things, they will start charging. Mark my words.
As, we have previously raised - we would really like to see this feature. Google organic searches are the biggest traffic source to our website. In a FB group of 8,000 members many are reporting success with being a GVR connectivity partner. Our previous channel manager who we consider inferior has had it for some time now. We really want to stay with OR, but this remains a consideration for us. I hope OR will be able to bring good news this Autumn, thanks for all your work on the subject.
Curious if you were able to find another way to list on Google Vacation Rentals while maintaining OR as your PM system. We are in the same boat as we have multiple properties and we are being searched and found on Google now.
Currently looking at this too. Need to find one of the integrated CM's that has a reasonable price and find a way of syncing the calendar and pricing between the them and OR. that last bit is the biggest headache.
Considering an alternative CM, plus Pricelabs to sync across OR and the other CM and do an ical sync. Seems overly complicated and overly expensive to acheive something that is available in other CM's. Frustrating!
It is either that or go direct and try to get listed myself, this is a revenue stream i do not wish to miss out on.
