Ebookers comes clean on the Google issue

So Ebookers has responded and admitted that it has “big problems” with its search engine optimisation on Google.

This follows a flurry of activity in search engine circles earlier this week and here on the Travolution Blog [where we had a particularly passionate response from Mr Travel Rants, Darren Cronian]

This obviously comes as no surprise as users searching for the online agent on Google have been greeted with everything except Ebookers in recent weeks on search results for "ebookers".

What our exclusive interview with Ebookers revealed is that the Travelport-owned website has, in fact, been at the centre of an ongoing row with Google – with the Ebookers.com site actually de-listed by the search engine for three months earlier this year.

Ouch.

As widely predicted, the reason for all this mayhem is that Ebookers has been using a single IP address across its portfolio – including the dot-com and other country sites.

Google, as many will know, has a tendency to frown upon duplicate content on different sites that still use the same IP address – cue the rather swkward problems recently that have seen searches on the keyword “ebookers” place the official site at least half way down the second page of results.

Not only this, but angry consumer watchdog sites, such as Grumbletext, with some highly critical comments about Ebookers, have often been placed in second or third spot.

Double ouch.

The company’s e-marketing boss, Saurabh Kumar, seemed rather unconcerned about the whole issue [although only the foolish would be openly distraught about it to a member of the media, of course!].

Elsewhere, on the E-consultancy website, comments have been flying in about Ebookers "link bombing" itself.

As reported in our June edition, Ebookers owner, Travelport, is in the middle of a wide-ranging strategy to revamp all sites outside of the US, with Ebookers expected to see a major redesign and overhaul of its back-end.

This much-needed work, coupled with sorting out the IP address issue, will cure it of the problems currently being experienced on the Google platform – apparently.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution