Tripadvisor Says SEO Remains Key to Growth

Tripadvisor has reported a significant financial writedown linked largely to ongoing changes in Google search, while warning that SEO challenges are likely to continue affecting business growth into 2027.

The company recorded a $369.5 million non-cash goodwill impairment in the third quarter, affecting its Hotels and Other segment, which includes hotel comparison services and media advertising. Tripadvisor attributed much of the decline to ongoing traffic pressures caused by changes in the search landscape.

Revenue in this segment fell by 23% to $151.6 million during the quarter.

During the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Barclays analyst Ross Sandler asked how close Tripadvisor’s main brand was to what is known as ‘Google Zero’, a term describing websites receiving little or no organic traffic from Google.

Chief Financial Officer Mike Noonan said the company’s SEO exposure was in the mid-to-high teens, representing a considerable reduction compared with the previous year. However, he did not clarify exactly which business measure this percentage referred to.

Tripadvisor also acknowledged that its growing reliance on paid marketing channels has increased marketing costs as a proportion of revenue.

SEO Challenges Expected to Continue into 2027

When asked about the impact of Google search changes, Noonan explained that most of the company’s SEO exposure comes from the established Tripadvisor brand rather than its experiences booking platform, Viator.

He expects SEO to remain a challenge to growth in 2027, although current trends suggest the negative impact could begin to ease.

The company has previously reported similar pressures on its Experiences division. In August, Noonan estimated that SEO had reduced booking growth by around five percentage points.

During the second-quarter update, he said this impact was gradually becoming smaller as organic search accounted for a lower proportion of total bookings. By the third-quarter report, the estimated effect had reduced to around three percentage points of booking growth.

Experiences bookings increased by 2% during the latest quarter. Viator recorded a 4% rise, while bookings made through Tripadvisor’s own website declined by a low double-digit percentage.

Tripadvisor Increases Its Reliance on Paid Marketing

The company is also spending a greater proportion of its revenue on marketing as it moves away from relying on free search traffic.

Marketing accounted for 48.8% of Tripadvisor’s revenue from continuing operations in the third quarter, compared with 43.3% during the same period last year. These figures exclude TheFork, which the company has sold.

Although marketing expenditure remained broadly unchanged at $213 million, revenue declined by 11% to $436.4 million.

Noonan linked the higher marketing ratio to ongoing SEO difficulties, particularly across the Hotels and Other segment and Tripadvisor’s main website. As organic traffic becomes less reliable, the business has increasingly turned to paid channels to attract customers.

The company also reported a reduction in available clicks through search engine marketing (SEM) in August. This coincided with a planned shift in spending towards newer paid channels that are not yet operating at the same scale.

Chief Executive Matt Goldberg said search advertising auctions had become more competitive, making some SEM spending less efficient.

He also explained that Tripadvisor is looking beyond paid search as more travellers discover activities and experiences through social media and other channels earlier in their booking journey.

Tripadvisor Shares Its Approach to AI Search

Alongside traditional search, Tripadvisor is exploring opportunities to attract customers through artificial intelligence platforms.

Goldberg said Viator is working with several AI providers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini and Meta Muse. Although traffic from these sources remains relatively small, the company is seeing promising results from some partnerships.

He explained that integrations with Model Context Protocol (MCP) partners are generating bookings at higher-than-average conversion rates and booking values.

Goldberg also said Tripadvisor’s brands have a strong share of citations for AI prompts about travel experiences, although the company did not explain how this figure was calculated.

AI currently accounts for less than 1% of Tripadvisor’s overall traffic, according to Goldberg, but he expects this channel to continue growing.

He added that AI visitors appear to convert particularly well. Traffic from AI sources reportedly converts at nearly five times the average rate on Viator and around twice the average rate on Tripadvisor.

The company also noted that the number of unique content contributors has remained stable or declined only slightly this year, despite double-digit reductions in traffic.

Goldberg believes hotel partners, online travel agencies and AI platforms continue to place value on the content these contributors produce, whether through customer leads, licensed material or citations in AI-generated answers.

What This Means for the Future of SEO

Tripadvisor’s latest results highlight how changes in organic search can affect established businesses that have traditionally relied on Google to attract visitors.

As organic traffic becomes less dependable, companies may need to increase their investment in paid advertising and explore other ways to reach potential customers.

For Tripadvisor, marketing now represents a significantly larger share of revenue than it did a year ago, reflecting the cost of moving away from free search traffic.

The company is also looking to AI platforms as another source of visitors and bookings. While this traffic currently represents a small proportion of its overall audience, its reported conversion performance suggests it could become more important.

Tripadvisor is not alone in facing these pressures. Other publishers and online businesses have also reported declining search referrals, raising questions about how much organic traffic companies can expect to receive from Google in the future.

Leadership Changes and Business Outlook

Tripadvisor is also preparing for changes within its senior leadership team.

Goldberg is expected to remain Chief Executive until the middle of February while the board searches for his successor. Noonan will leave his position as CFO at the end of the year, with Kristen Dalton, the company’s head of strategy and operations, due to become interim CFO from 1 January.

The company is continuing its review of its business portfolio, including consideration of possible strategic alternatives.

Tripadvisor expects adjusted EBITDA for its Experiences division to be approximately break-even in the fourth quarter as it continues investing in newer paid marketing channels.

The next financial update should provide another indication of whether the negative impact of SEO on Experiences bookings is continuing to decline from the estimated three percentage points reported in the third quarter.