Yesterday online travel giant Expedia announced Q4 2013 and full year results. The company “beat the street,” reporting strong room night and revenue growth across all geographies.
So far a suspected penalty from Google hasn’t hurt the company’s bottom line. See our earlier stories:
- Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over Unnatural Links
- Expedia & Google: No Comment From Both About Possible Expedia Penalty
Last month the site took what appears to be a major traffic hit, losing as much as 25 percent of its organic search traffic. Many believe this was because Google penalized the site after discovery of a paid link scheme.
Google and Expedia have repeatedly and pointedly not commented on the issue. However there’s substantial evidence that Expedia was participating in a paid-link scheme.
During the Expedia earnings call yesterday CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was asked about the suspected penalty by a JP Morgan Chase analyst:
That’s a very bland non-answer. One might call it “evasive” even.
Expedia gets a significant portion of its bookings through search traffic. Indeed, Expedia is highly sensitive to its dependence on Google. Not just a “big partner,” Expedia sees Mountain View as a potentially formidable competitor in travel. The company is part of the anti-Google lobbying group FairSearch.org that has complained loudly about Google “favoring its own content” vs. third parties in organic results.
The following is a discussion citing Expedia’s Martin MacDonald from a Linkdex report called “Travel 360”:
The impact of any penalty resulting in a 25 percent loss (or more) of organic traffic should manifest at some point in Expedia booking and revenue losses. So far that hasn’t happened.
Expedia is a company with many brands and diversified sources of traffic. It may be able to “compensate” for the suspected penalty by buying more SEM or through its subsidiary sites and affiliates.
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