Tripadvisor lowers outlook

The company offered a muted outlook across its major businesses, and attributed the softness to changes in Google’s travel search results pages

Tripadvisor pointed to Google’s free, organic search results as the culprit. Last week, Trivago said Google’s changes to paid advertising formats were hitting its financial results too.

Key takeaways

• “We also witnessed a wide-reaching update to the (Google) travel SERP (Search Engine Results Page) that extended for a more prolonged period of time than typical updates that we have seen in the past,” the company said;
• Officials said the changes to search engine results pages on Google, which has roughly a 90% grip on search according to various accounts, began late last year and continued into the first quarter;
• Tripadvisor hotel metasearch, or Brand Tripadvisor, would see revenue fall single to high-single digits, and falling adjusted EBITDA margins would be more than margin improvement at Viator and TheFork.

Get the full story at Yahoo! Finance and Tripadvisor