Priceline.com CEO on the Death of Search Engine Optimization
Photo Credit: Google's search results are often dominated by AdWords and Google's own products. At lower left are organic hotel results that are a gateway to Google's Hotel Ads. Additional organic results are still present below the fold but users have to scroll down to find them. Google
Skift Take
Search engine optimization had a great run but we are way past it now. Instead the top dogs in digital marketing are Google itself and the largest and most skilled players that can pay for those clicks and convert the hell out of them.
"And so I believe it is a paid world."
With those simple words, Priceline.com CEO Paul Hennessy summarized a development that has become painfully obvious to travel brands trying to get their piece of free real estate in Google search results: Search engine optimization, the science of getting a company to surface high in Google's organic search results, is basically near death or already a fatality as Google AdWords and Google's own hotel, flight, local, shopping, and Google+ products shove organic results down the page or screen into Web and mobile oblivion.
One of the only ways to get any visibility in this paid Google environment is to spend big bucks for a text advertisement.
Consider below what's visible on a desktop screen when a user queries Google for "hotels in nyc." Google advertisements above and to the right of the only organic results, which happen to be Google's Hotel Ads product.
Attendees at the Skift Global Forum in Brooklyn, who were present for Henne
