Google Discontinues Carousel for Local Search Results

For local categories such as restaurants, hotels, and nightlife, the horizontal Carousel at the top of the page has been replaced by drop-down ads.

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Date published
November 17, 2014 Categories

The horizontal Carousel will no longer be at the top of Google searches for local hotels, restaurants, and nightlife options, replaced instead with a “three-pack” of ads.

Google started to back away from Carousel over the summer, when the search giant tested a new format that resembled mobile search results.

Now, much like movies and TV shows, hotel “Book a Room” ads show up in an ad list format, clustered in groups of three organic listings that link to separate pages. Clicking “more hotels” at the bottom brings users to a full page of listings, each of which has its own page. The blocks of ads from Google Hotel Finder will also be discontinued.

“The new three-pack of organic listings features an interesting combination of organic results and AdWords working together,” says Lisa Raehsler, founder and principal strategist at Big Click Co., an online advertising company. “Clicking on the organic results leads to a new details page where initiating a second action, like hotel reservation search, is a sponsored ad. This opens up opportunities for SEO/PPC to be more integrated and see more interactive ad units in search results.”

Carousel launched last summer, eventually expanding to non-local search categories, such as U.S. presidents and states, and landmarks in various cities. It’s unknown whether Google will keep Carousel for those non-local results.

Much like Carousel itself, the search engine’s new enhancement is only in the U.S. for now. The ads are still powered by the Hotel Ads API and link to advertisers’ sites.

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