After Expedia insisted on an inevitable "no comment" for weeks, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was always going to face questions during its latest financial results about the search saga.
Expedia.com was reported to have been hit by a major penalty by Google for what some commentators decided was a complex and now obviously rather damaging paid linking scheme.
Sites outside of the US and Canada were not affected, but Search Metrics claimed Expedia had lost as much as a quarter of its visibility in search results due to Google frowning on apparently unsavoury link building practices.
It was unclear as to the process behind the alleged activity – Expedia’s in-house SEO team or an outsourced agency, or a combination of both.
But the revelation had clearly got SEO wonks and the wider industry foaming at the mouth as to how a brand with the digital marketing resources of Expedia had somehow managed to find itself staring down the search barrel held by Google.
Responding to a question during the company's Q4 2013 earnings call this week, Khosrowshahi told an analyst from JP Morgan Chase the company would no comment specifically on "speculative articles about Google trends".
But he added:
"What I'll tell you in general is that our traffic from Google, both on a paid and an organic basis, continues to increase on a year-on-year basis."
Khosrowshahi says the company looks at all its SEM and SEO procedures in Google, and "we're constantly auditing them and making sure that our practices are industry leading."
"Google's a big partner. We continue to grow with them. And from a long-term basis, we look to continue to grow with them going forward."
According to Search Metrics, Expedia.com is still suffering from the supposed "penalty" handed down by the Google algorithm or, as many suspect, a manual intervention after the practice came to light in December.
Expedia Inc's share price, which took a fairly sizeable tumble on the back of reports about the search penalty in mid-January has started to recover.
During 2013, Expedia Inc saw revenue grow 18% year-on-year, giving it full-year revenue of $4.7 billion, with adjusted EBITDA up 9% to $880 million.
Room night growth across the business was up 23% on the back of gross bookings increasing by 16% y/y for 2013.
NB: Black hat image via Shutterstock.