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.
Ken is this still moving forward?
Yes, in fact I saw traffic between our devs and Google's earlier today. So this is actively in development, as promised.
I see my property is already "listed" on Google Vacation Rentals - by some European company I've never heard of called "bluepillow.com" which, in turn, redirects to my listing on VRBO.
Obviously I would rather google redirect to my direct booking ownerrez powered website rather than VRBO through bluepillow.com.
Will your integration override all the other crap that other companies have been feeding Google?
Yes, in fact I saw traffic between our devs and Google's earlier today. So this is actively in development, as promised.
How did you find your property on Google vacation rentals? I cannot find mine.
Google "vacation rentals <city>, <state>"
After the ads you will see a Vacation Rentals section with aa few properties and a map, reposition and zoom map to your place.
My place does not have a Price or a price balloon, but it did have a red dot.
How did you find your property on Google vacation rentals? I cannot find mine.
Thank you. I can only find my Google my business listing at one of my cabins. My other cabins don't show up . Interesting.
— Bluepillow is a search engine that allows you to search from between 10,000,000 accommodations around the world, in countries such as the US. based in the EU, it had very low ratings on trust pilot.
When I pulled it up it feeds directly into Booking.com, because of bad experiences with Booking.com we say booking dot no
thank you - i was trying to remember what channel they fed thru and could not
Would also love to be added to the beta group :D
Interesting article about the Google Layoffs. Layoffs hit Google Flights the most, and not the other parts of Google Travel, which include Vacation Rental Homes:
https://skift.com/2023/01/30/google-flights-could-strategy-after-heavy-layoffs/
From the article:
Potential Strategy Changes
The inordinately large amount of layoffs at Google Flights on a percentage basis could signal:
...
The source said that even before the layoffs, Google has been transitioning employees out of Flights and its airline enterprise business, and into Google Travel’s hotels, vacation rentals, and things to do, as well as sustainability. In the case of hotels and things to do, at least, there is a greater revenue potential than for flights. U.S. airlines got stingy about paying flight commissions two decades ago.
...
That's good to know Alan, thank you! I wonder what they're going to end up charging us. I'm still seriously worried about the data they're going to ask for. I know with cars they want all of your information directly from the car company without giving you an opt-out option. Not to mention the troves of data they collect while you use your car & android auto.
I have a strong privacy policy and don't use google analytics or FB pixel because of it and the data (and abuse of it) that FB and Google are well known for.
Alan,
How did you get on Google Travel? I thought OR is not yet a connectivity partner yet and GT only allows PMs with 1000+ units to self integrate. Did you integrate on your own before these new rules?
That's good to know Alan, thank you! I wonder what they're going to end up charging us. I'm still seriously worried about the data they're going to ask for. I know with cars they want all of your information directly from the car company without giving you an opt-out option. Not to mention the troves of data they collect while you use your car & android auto.
I have a strong privacy policy and don't use google analytics or FB pixel because of it and the data (and abuse of it) that FB and Google are well known for.
What are you doing that google would want your car info?
Anyways Google has not had much luck beyond pay per click revenue model. I am not sure that this will amount to much.
I just ran across this video this morning. Anyway we can get OwnerRez to be a partner along with the many other PMSs that are now part of the Google Vacation Rental platform?
Check out this video: https://boostly.co.uk/difference-of-google-vacation-and-google-business/
Integration with Google Vacation Rentals is in active development.
You may have noticed that Google Vacation Rentals is listing OwnerRez as a connectivity partner:
https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/11946834?hl=en
This is legally true (we've signed agreements), and should prove that we're serious about this integration to any doubters ;-) ... but, no, it does not mean that the integration is actually working and available quite yet. As previously noted, it is in active development - towards the end, in that we're doing integration testing with Google, but we need to work through that process before even a beta release.
On that note, we have dozens if not hundreds of clients who have asked to participate in the beta. We will reach out to those who are selected, which will be based on various technical reasons so as to thoroughly wring out all aspects of the integration as much as possible. But, because the demand for this feature is so great, rather than doing a large-scale beta, we'll move into wide release as quickly as seems prudent. So, if you have asked to join the beta and aren't invited, please don't take it personally. :-)
Integration with Google Vacation Rentals is in active development.
We rarely release ETAs for development, and when we do, they tend to end up taking longer than expected... so no, it'll be done when it's finished. But since we're actually working on it, it'll get done within a few months at most.
That is awesome. Thanks for the quick update here.
That’s awesome. Thanks for the update Ken.
