Google launched this week an interactive “carousel” slider feature for its hotel, restaurant and bar local search results.
The feature allows users to click on one of the places in the carousel to get more details on it, including its overall review-based score, address and photos. To see more hotels, users can click the arrow at the right of the carousel and zoom in on the map that appears below the carousel to restrict the search to only places in a specific area.
Google told HOTELS that the ranking of the hotels is based on their organic search results.
“We’re always working to make search more useful and experimenting with new ways to present answers you’re looking for. The current experiment with hotels is similar to Knowledge Graph results we already have for things like restaurants, bars, attractions celebrities, and other commonly searched for categories,” said Google spokesperson Sandra Heikkinen Glading.
While the feature was already available in beta and on some tablets, it was launched this week for desktop. Google said the interactive “carousel” is rolling out in English in the U.S. and that it will add more features and languages over time.