Do TripAdvisor links provide search optimization benefits?

by Josiah Mackenzie on June 29, 2010 9 Comments

Vanessa asked me on Twitter if TripAdvisor’s Business Listings links provide any search optimization value:

The link she is referring to is TripAdvisor’s advertising program that allows businesses to place a direct link to their website, along with their phone number and email address. Visitors can then book directly through your property instead of one of TripAdvisor’s partner OTAs:

If you get a little geeky and look at the source code of these links, you can see that they are using Javascript “onclick” links – which do not pass “link juice” or provide any link building benefit.

That’s not to say that you should not use this program. I have anecdotal evidence that hotels make quite a bit of money by placing a direct link to their site. This is especially true if you’re doing well on TripAdvisor – like the Library Hotel above – and the majority of your reviews are positive.

But to answer the original question: no, the links do not currently benefit your website from a search optimization standpoint.

I hope TripAdvisor changes this soon, because SEO-friendly links would be an attractive benefit to have.

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Article by Josiah Mackenzie // June 29, 2010 Josiah helps hospitality organizations use technology and the social web to provide better service and generate more profits.

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Comments

 
  • Jono Ellis // June 30, 2010 @ 5:54 am Reply

    Our company experimented with these links for some quite popular city hotels and saw no real benefit… virtually no traffic came through from the link and the tracked bookings were worth less than the cost of the link in the first place.

  • John McPhee // June 30, 2010 @ 11:47 am Reply

    The links may not pass link juice, but Google can still see that a highly credible, and respected, site is linking to you. There is a measurement, very similar to PageRank, called TrustRank. It’s a method that is used to identify how trustworthy a website is, based on how far away from the original “seed set” it is. Here’s a Wikipedia article explaining more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrustRank

    So, sites like TripAdvisor do play some role in link building, even though they don’t pass their link juice onto each site, they do still carry value.

  • John McPhee // June 30, 2010 @ 6:29 pm Reply

    Actually, yes, I believe you are correct. The engine must be able to actually follow the link. I was thinking more about follow vs. nofollow links, and disregarded the fact that it’s javascript.

  • Matt // July 1, 2010 @ 6:29 am Reply

    There´s a lot of confusion about TrustRank and it´s actually not what most people think it is. Have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8mUXQzwEvs

    Regarding the JavaScript, Google Bot doesn´t execute JavaScript, so links wrapped in a script will not be taken into account. They have been experimenting with identifying URLs in JavaScript code but no one know exactly if that is actively used.

    NoFollow links don´t pass value (PR) either, they can be followed by GoogleBot to discover new sites. So the name is a bit misleading…

  • Mitaroy Goa Hotel // July 1, 2010 @ 1:12 pm Reply

    Josiah,

    I am sure all of us would love to hear of examples or an interview of a hotel who has succeeded with Trip Advisor’s Business Listings.

    As a regular user of Google’s Adwords and their PPC module, I am confident that my money is being well spent.

    TripAdvisor’s fixed fee only makes me think that Trip Advisor is not confident that they can earn their clicks like Google does…

    Cheers
    Mihir

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