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With millennials now carving the trends path and dictating what’s hot and what’s not, it’s no wonder Google are making it easier for them to travel the world and feed into their wanderlust. Did you know the first year of millennials are now turning 35(!) and 66% of them say they can find all the information they need for a trip on either desktop or mobile, whereas people aged above 35 said they could not. The era has turned mobile and Google has evolved their spectrum of products to match this, making lives easy peasy on any device.

You may have noticed on Google that when you search for flights or hotels Google’s trip planner appears (normally in position 0) helping users find the most competitive pricing and best location for their holiday. But what about when they’re already at said location?

A Good Think study discovered that 74% of travelers are more stressed when it comes to planning the finer details of their trip, like what are they going to do during their stay, how are they going to get around, what are they going to eat?

Cue Google Trips.

Available to download on IOS and Android, Google Trips was introduced to the app market at the beginning of Autumn last year. In short, it’s a personalised tour guide in your pocket!

The app features some of the following aspects:

You can search, shape and save your trip within the app or download for offline use. But what does this mean for a marketer? Whether you’re a tourist attraction, a restaurant, cafe or transport organiser, it means you need to get your local listing sorted and get reviews, good reviews. Below we have listed some of the key elements you need to think about when creating your local listing and getting on Trips:

• Create your local listing with Google My Business making sure information is accurate and complete
• Make sure the information your are adding to GMB is consistent with what’s on your website – and all around the web for that matter
• Claim and verify your location so your business can benefit from search, maps and trips!  
• Add photos, tell people who you are and what your business represents
• Manage and respond to reviews, interact with your customers – people love that which makes Google love it too

Just remember how Google determines local rankings: Relevance, Distance, Prominence.

Relevance:

How well does your local listing match what someone’s searching for? Adding complete and accurate information will help Google understand who you are and what you do in able to match to a user’s search.

Distance:

How far is your business from the searcher? If users are searching, they want a result which is close by or in the location they are looking for. FYI if a user does not state the location they want, Google will calculate the distance based on information they know about the searcher’s location.

Prominence:

How well known or how much information is there about the business? Google appreciates that some businesses are more well known offline such as museums or historical places and Google likes to reflect this within local search.  But Google also appreciates good links and information it can find across the web including links, articles, directories and most importantly reviews. A business review count and score are factored into a local search ranking, high volumes of positive reviews will more than likely improve a local listing rank over a business with poor reviews.

Don’t forget a local ranking cannot be bought on Google, you must earn it, just like traditional SEO. With Google Trips making exploring new places easier, and at our fingertips, if you’re not optimising local SEO, you’re going to be losing customers