Yesterday morning, after a tip off, it seemed an anomaly had cropped up on Google with a number of hotels searched for alongside the term 'booking.com' coming back with 953 reviews and 4.5 stars.
Search for example for 'Westbury Hotel, booking.com' and you see the following:
The sponsored advertisement at the top says the hotel has a 4.5 star rating and has 953 seller reviews.
Click on the link and the Mayfair property actually has five stars and 207 customer reviews.
A handful of us here mistakenly believed there was a glitch in the system with many hotels receiving the same star ratings.
It makes you wonder what consumers believe when they see stars and numbers written beside the name of a hotel.
Our savvy readers were quick to point out (see comments) the error but at best it seems misleading.
As a consumer you could be forgiven for thinking the reviews refer to the hotels themselves.
And, how many consumers would be likely to click through to comments about booking.com as a seller as opposed to the site to book the property they are interested in?
The booking.coms ads are not the only ones, the same is true within advertisements of other suppliers such as Travel Republic where the star rating and reviews refer to the seller.
Then, if you look at how TripAdvisor results are displayed in Google organic listings, the actual number of consumer reviews on the property is provided.
Again, as pointed out by readers at the thick end of PPC campaigns, it's to do with how the search giant shows seller ratings in PPC advertising and hotel ratings in organic listings.
Ask your not so search engine savvy friends and family what they think.
NB: This post replaces a previous version on the scoop that never was.