Google 'teleporting' feature and hostel booking engines

[Hostels]

Google has recently launched a feature called "teleporting" *. It means that when you search for specific site, another search box might open within the search results.

Here is an example from a Google search for hostelworld:



If you type a search query into the secondary search box, you get what is called a Google "site:" query, which is a regular search within a single site:



Hostelworld is the only hostel booking engine that seems to have this "teleporting" feature. If you type in hostelbookers, hostelsclub, or hostels, there won't be a secondary search box. I haven't seen too many search results with this feature. Another keyword that triggers this behavior that I've seen mentioned in Internet marketing blogs is virgin holidays.

*further reading and reference: googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/search-within-site-tale-of.html

[Hostels]

New York Times covers the controversy about this feature here.

[santa klaus]

Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.

Hahahaha

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Hahahaha

Yeah... basically a way for Google to get more pageviews and increase the chance that people will click on Google Adwords, which are charged "per-click".

Here is an example of what happens when you use Google "teleporting" on a search for hostelworld:



Natural search results from Hostelworld.com highlighted in yellow, and paid ads in red. One pay-per-click ad from Hostelworld (increasing the chance that someone clicks on the ad rather than a free natural search result) and 3 competitor ads.