Lay My Hat

Google My Business isn't a listing site and we aren't supposed to list a holiday rental property on it.

What are the advantages of doing so (if this is possible) - does anybody look for holiday rentals there?

I can see how it could work for an accountant, for ex, but not for us.

Any ideas gratefully received.

I think the main advantage is that when someone searches google with terms including your area / town and relevant words like 'holiday' your property is included in a list and on the google map, so people can click through to your website. It also adds to credibility if you've been verified at that address.

Are we not supposed to? Looking at the area where my property is there are lots of other self catering accommodations listed too.

Thank you, Susan.
I see how it works now - but I could only see Expedia, booking.com etc- no single owners.

Google seems to have changed this very recently as my site which was classified as Self Catering Accommodation always appeared at the top of the search results which accompanied the map when searching for "holiday cottage" and the name of the village.

But now when using that search term Google only brings up properties which are classed as Holiday Flats and only those which are on booking.com or cottages.com (i am on neither). And none of the holiday cottages which are in the village but not on booking.com now appear in the results or on the map.

Really frustrating as I got a lot of click throughs from that which are now non-existent.

Do Google have some sort of tie-in with Booking.com?

Very disappointed to find that Google My Business has unfortunately changed as mrsbarkay pointed out...

My property and other local properties are no longer shown as they were previously

It's worse than that. Any search for holiday cottage comes up with this map showing cottages and prices and availability from booking.com on the front page very prominent so everything else is pushed way down the page and no-one is going to bother to look at anything else.

It's going to adversely effect every listing site that we list with too - they are all effectively demoted. No wonder our bookings are way down this year.

newtimber wrote:showing cottages and prices and availability from booking.com on the front page very prominent

Given this and ..... this

http://blog.guestrevu.com/trend-digest- ... r-bookings

am beginning to wonder if the big guys have decided to stitch-up the market for themselves.

Time to accept your fate or try something different?

It seems to depend on what you put into the search.

Put in the resort/town/village plus "self catering" or just "cottage" and I seem to get the usual listings, including my cottage which has the "self catering accommodation" classification.

But yes, when you append "holiday cottage" to the resort/town/village you just get the "holiday flat" classified places. Most of them are not flats so I wonder why they have been set up with this classification? Presumably something to do with being on booking.com.

Not good. I can't find any explanation as to why this has happened.

Todays silly question but where/which page are you searching from to bring up maps & businesses pins?

Just searching on google (www.google.co.uk). If you type in a few words (e.g. Cotswolds Holiday Cottages) then scroll down a bit you get a map with properties underneath. These are properties set up in Google My Business. Now you just seem to get the ones with the category "Holiday Flat". Before you'd get the ones set up with "self-catering accommodation".

I'm wondering what would happen if we try to change our category to "holiday flat"?

None of it makes that much sense anyway. Google my Business guidelines say that ineligible businesses include "Rental or for-sale properties, such as holiday homes, show homes or vacant apartments. Sales or leasing offices, however, are eligible for verification." So not sure why the categories "self-catering accommodation" and "holiday flat" exist anyway.

Here is another interesting article on the same topic:

http://www.vrmintel.com/google-moving-v ... -get-ready

Thanks SusanMay, I guessed as much & wondered why the map only seems to appear on UK based searches. A generic rental villa search in our Greek region just brings up a standard list page without maps or pins & of course dominated by OTA's.
After being such a dog to set up & verify it all seems a little pointless now other than as a verification tool & as a means for google to sell subscribers advertising

Just bumping this thread.
Analytics suggests that a good few casual surfers have visited my page, clicked a link etc, etc. & within the past couple of months, for no apparent reason I have been rated 5* twice & 1* once. No words, just a rating. Odd thing is none of the 'people' that made such an effort have ever visited our property, of this I am 100% certain.
No joy in getting any advice from GMB but it seems a little odd that after jumping through hoops to verify the listing there is apparently carte-blanche for absolutely anybody to over or under rate, boost or undermine your listing without recourse.
Why on earth would anybody search out & rate somewhere they've never been? And why on earth would the all powerful G not have any kind of validation procedure?
I'm not sure if a GMB listing is anything more useful than just an extra online presence but it seems odd that it is open to obvious manipulation.

I changed my category to Holiday Flat to see what would happen. I do appear as a dot on the map but still not in the listings. So not really worth doing

This looks currently like a really serious problem but could be a serious opportunity.

Take this search:



On the map part, there are 5 dots and one Price flag. Each of those 6 represents a holiday cottage that Google knows about.

The one that has a price, also has a booking.com link. The others don't. Their links are the owners own website. A few don't even have a web link at all, just the address and the owner's phone number.

So, it doesn't appear to be tied in with booking.com or homeaway or any of the others.

Take an example: The Boathouse, Kerrera. I did a google search for "the boathouse kerrera" (and ignoring the booking.com hit which is for a place called "boathouse" in a different location,) there are no OTA hits for this. However, google does display a card for it. Similar to the GMB cards.

Now, I open Google Maps and home in on the location of The Boathouse, and guess what? It's not there at any resolution. So, it doesn't appear to be GMB. Except... if, in Google Maps my search term is "The Boathouse Kerrera", then it does appear.

It seems to be europe-wide and Asia. Maybe everywhere except for USA?

Another weird thing: on the card for some of those places, there's an "Own this business" link. That implies that Google has found the pictures, the address and has accepted reviews for a place that nobody has created a GMB entry for.

So, many properties have managed to get on-board totally by accident as far as I can see and they are getting a huge advantage. Please Google, tell us how to get on there!