Free booking links on Google Hotels: does your website show up?

A Tuesday in October, 10:15 pm. Let’s call it Hotel Azahar: a 9-room hotel in a village in the Axarquía, with a booking engine on its website for a couple of years now. The owner has just closed reception and, before putting her phone down, she searches for the hotel’s name on Google, the way a guest would. The listing comes up, with its photos and reviews. She taps the dates and picks a weekend in November for 2 adults. Below, prices from several online travel agencies appear. The hotel’s own website is nowhere to be seen.

The booking engine works. Anyone who goes to the website and presses book can book. But that Google screen is exactly where guests compare, and there the Azahar only exists through third parties, who take their commission on every night they sell.

Nobody has done anything wrong on purpose. Nobody has told Google how much a night at the Azahar costs, that’s all.

What that link is and why it doesn’t appear on its own

Google calls them “free booking links”. According to its help page on free hotel booking links, they show the name of your site or hotel next to the room price for the chosen dates, and whoever clicks goes straight to the landing page you’ve specified. Clicks cost nothing. The same page says Google doesn’t charge for the placements or for interactions with those links.

As for where they appear, the page on how travellers find hotel booking links explains that when someone searches for a specific hotel, Google shows them the hotel’s information and links to book for their dates. According to the page on the components of hotel booking links, paid links are labeled with an “Ads” badge, free booking links are listed under “All options” within hotel searches, and the “Prices” tab is the full list of booking links.

What happened to the Azahar on Tuesday is explained on another page. Google’s guide for property owners says, in its step 2, that with a complete Business Profile the hotel appears on Maps and in Search, but without prices. The listing puts you on the map. The price and the link to your website come from somewhere else. The Business Profile help on hotel information says the same from the other side: the prices and booking links shown on a hotel’s profile come from Hotel Ads and free booking links.

What Google needs: your prices and a page of your own

You need 2 things, and the second is useless without the first.

The first is a place to book that belongs to you. The help page on managing rates and availability in your Business Profile is clear about it: the booking page URL can’t be a social network such as Facebook or an online travel agency such as Expedia or Booking.com. It has to take the traveller to your website so they can book directly there. If the book button on your website opens Booking.com, Google has no booking page of yours to show. The underlying problem is the same one we described with the Book button that opens Booking.com or TheFork.

The second is someone passing your prices and availability to Google. There used to be a shortcut: entering rates by hand from the Business Profile. That same page warns that, from 30 July 2025, you need a partner to show rates on your Business Profile, and it recommends working with a central reservation system, a booking engine or another partner. The guide for property owners adds that, because of high demand, direct integration with Google isn’t currently possible. The way in is to share your prices through a connectivity partner, which can be a central reservation system, a booking engine, a channel manager or even a PMS.

For the owner of a small hotel, it boils down to this: you don’t connect it yourself, your booking engine or channel manager provider does. Google says so plainly on the free booking links page: if you’re a property owner using a booking system, you may already be connected through your provider, and the thing to do is ask them to set up the links for you. The guide for property owners links to a list of partners already integrated with Google. If your provider isn’t on it, the guide points them to a getting-started guide for connectivity partners.

A note on the order in which links appear. The same help page says that, to rank free booking links, Google takes into account signals such as user preferences, the landing page experience and the accuracy of the prices it has been sent. It also says you can’t pay to move up, and that advertising or not on Hotel Ads doesn’t change that order. In other words, what gets you placed is a real price and a page that works.

The 10-minute check, this week

Do it on your phone, using mobile data rather than the hotel wifi and in a private browser window, like any guest would.

1. Search for the hotel’s name the way a guest would type it, and open the listing.
2. Pick real dates, for example a weekend a month from now, for 2 adults. Make them nights when you have rooms free, so there’s something to show.
3. Go to the “Prices” tab and scroll down to “All options”. Look for your hotel’s or your website’s name among the agencies. Anything labeled with an “Ads” badge is something else. Right now you’re looking at the free links.
4. If you appear, tap it and note which page you land on. Google’s best practices ask that users land directly on a page where they find the room and rate they chose, see them clearly, and that the page loads in a reasonable time. If you land on the home page or on an empty calendar where you have to enter the dates again, you already have something to ask about.
5. Compare the price Google shows with the one on the page you landed on. The same best practices ask that the prices sent match those on the landing page for all users and devices. The Business Profile rates help adds that prices must include all mandatory taxes and fees.
6. Repeat the search in Google Maps. According to Google’s FAQ on prices and availability, travellers see your prices and availability in Search and on Maps.
7. In the last minute, check that the name, address and phone number on the listing are up to date. The best practices ask for this explicitly, and also that the Business Profile is verified. If the listing shows an old number, start there. We explain it in the phone numbers that don’t match on your Google listing.

That tells you which of 3 cases you’re in. If you don’t appear, you’re missing the connection or your own booking page. If you appear but land on the home page or the price doesn’t match, the connection exists but is badly set up. If you appear, land on the room with the dates already filled in and the price is the same, leave it alone.

What to ask your booking engine or channel manager

Ask by email, so you have it in writing. These are the questions we’d ask:

• Are you integrated with Google as a hotel connectivity partner? Are you on the list of partners linked from Google’s help?
• Is my hotel sending rates and availability to Google right now? If not, what’s needed to switch it on, and does it cost anything on your side? Google doesn’t charge for clicks, but your provider will have its own terms, and it’s better to know them up front.
• Which exact page does someone land on when they click the link? Do they arrive with the dates, guests and room already selected?
• Does the price you send include taxes, and is it the same one the guest sees on my website? Do you send all rooms and all rates? How far ahead? According to the best practices, Google accepts prices up to a year in advance for stays of up to 30 days.
• Can you tag visits that come from free booking links? The free booking links help explains that you can add a dynamic variable to the landing page so that a third-party analytics tool can tell whether the click came from an ad or a free link.
• Who sees the reports? That same page says the performance data for free booking links is in the “Reports” section of the Hotel Center account. If the account belongs to your provider, ask them to send you the figures from time to time.
• And if I want to remove it one day, how is that done? The help says that if you don’t have a Hotel Center account, you can contact your integration partner and ask to opt out your property, or ask them to stop sending your prices. Be careful: if you stop sending them prices, hotel ads for that property stop running too.

If the answer to the first question is no and they have no plans, the guide for property owners links to a Google page for finding a partner. Changing booking engines is a bigger decision than this article covers, and it’s worth taking slowly.

When it isn’t worth it

If your website has no booking system of its own and everything goes through Booking.com, this comes later. First you need a page on your own domain where people can book at your prices. Without it, Google has nowhere to send anyone.

If what you have is a few individually owned apartments, check carefully which category you fall into. Google’s getting-started guide distinguishes hotel owners, who run commercial establishments with staff serving guests, from vacation rentals. And it warns that, for now, rentals from individual owners can’t take part in Vacation rentals. You need to be a registered property management company with a direct booking website, or be listed on a booking site integrated with that service.

If you change prices by hand in 3 places and the booking engine tends to lag behind, fix that first. A link that shows one price and then charges another annoys the guest right when they were about to book with you. On top of that, price accuracy is one of the signals Google says it uses to rank the links.

If what you’d really prefer is for people to call or message you, and with your number of rooms the phone is enough, that’s a reasonable decision too. We discuss it in WhatsApp Business or a Bookings page.

And if the check went well, with your website under “All options”, the room already selected and the same price, don’t change a thing. Repeat it whenever you change booking engine, rates or website, because that’s when it usually breaks.

If you’d rather we did it

If your booking engine is already integrated with Google and all that was missing was asking them to switch it on, you don’t need us: send the email with the questions above and repeat the check when they reply. If the check turned up more, such as a book button that ends at an agency, a page that forgets the dates or a listing with old details, that’s where we come in. Presence (€3,450) makes your website, your Google listing and your front door say the same thing: the same name, the same address, the same phone number and the same opening hours. Bookings (€5,450) adds bookings on your own domain, with a clear landing page that whichever provider connects your prices to Google can use to send people there. Operator (€7,950) is the biggest package, for when there are already messages and requests someone has to deal with every day. Care (€149/month) means someone repeats the phone search every month and tells you when Google’s price and your website’s price have stopped matching. It’s part of the work, not an extra you drop to save money.

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