Hotel visibility in AI search results: Where to start

Visibility in AI search results is a vital piece of your hotel’s success within the current marketing landscape. AI search results become more relevant every day, but it’s not always clear how to improve your hotel’s standings. 

Overview

AI models assess a variety of factors when digesting data and generating responses, prioritizing information that satisfies their built-in content preferences. Though visibility in AI search results is never a guarantee, aligning with these preferences across various marketing channels is the most effective way to make an impact for your hotel. 

Here are the main factors that AI models assess when generating search results. We’ll dive into more detail on each category in the rest of this article:

Website content

The content of your hotel’s website is arguably the most important factor behind AI search visibility. It’s vital that your website includes pages that are easily digestible for AI models, seamless to incorporate into AI search results, and applicable to the searches you want to rank for.

• Relevance: Your content should match what users are actually searching for. Consider FAQs, guest reviews, and your own AI searches to see what your guests want to know.
• Breadth/variety: A wide range of content provides your hotel with more opportunities to show up in AI search results. The more information you provide to an AI model, the more likely you are to appear.
• Uniqueness: If your hotel’s website provides information that no one else does, AI search models have no choice but to incorporate your data. Unique content reduces competition, improving your AI search visibility.
• Freshness: While certain AI models have a cutoff date for training data, all AI models prefer the content that is most recent within their database. Fresh, up-to-date information is most likely to show up in AI search results.
• Tone: AI models strive to reduce the amount of friction required to generate a response. If your content already matches the more conversational tone used in AI search results, your hotel is more likely to appear.
• Citations: Including quotes, sources, and citations improves your website’s credibility, which is an important factor considered by AI models.

Local business listings

Local business listings such as those on Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Tripadvisor are another significant source of information for AI models. Because this data is incorporated into AI search responses, accurate and in-depth listings across a variety of websites are likely to improve your hotel’s visibility in AI search. Also impactful are your hotel’s reviews within these listings, as social proof is another factor considered by AI models.

• Quantity: A wide variety of local business listings across the internet can improve your hotel’s visibility in AI search due to the large volume of data thereby made available to AI models.
• Accuracy: When business information is consistent across the web, including multiple local listings and even normal website content, this increases your hotel’s credibility and likelihood of appearing in AI search results.
• Depth: The more information that’s included in your listings, the better. Fully fleshed out local listings provide more opportunities for AI models to incorporate your data, and proves your reliability as a source for AI responses.
• Number of reviews: AI models tend to see popular businesses as having higher credibility, with high review counts often increasing visibility in AI search results.
• Review rating: Judging a business based on real human feedback allows AI models to provide quality recommendations, and positive reviews are a powerful form of social proof.

Schema

The use of schema is another factor that can significantly impact visibility in AI search. Well-structured, neatly coded schema makes information about your hotel incredibly easy for AI models to digest, improving visibility in AI search.

• Type of variables: Schema variables cover a wide variety of businesses and web content. Using the correct types of schema for your hotel and website ensure that AI models can easily find your hotel and correctly interpret your information.
• Depth: Highly detailed schema with a large quantity of relevant data is more likely to be used by AI models when generating responses.
• Tone: Similar to on-page content, using a conversational tone in applicable schema variables such as descriptions may increase the likelihood of your hotel’s information being incorporated into AI search results.
• Relevance: Make sure that your hotel’s schema reflects the topics that you want to appear for. Where applicable, incorporate focus keywords and relevant topics into your schema to maximize your visibility in AI search.

Website structure

Though website structure isn’t a make-or-break factor behind visibility in AI search results, a clean and optimized website structure can improve your hotel’s visibility by making it easier for AI models to digest and interpret your content.

• Bot-friendly documentation: llms.txt, sitemap.xml, and robots.txt documents all assist with webpage discoverability, making it easier for AI models to use your hotel’s content in AI search results.
• Lack of technical errors: Excessive technical errors such as 404 pages, duplicate content, or outdated webpages can slow down AI models, decreasing their ability to find and digest your hotel’s information.
• Well-optimized code: Intuitive sub-folder structure, neat and organized code layout, and quick load times streamline the AI training process, making your content easier to understand and potentially improving your hotel’s visibility in AI search.

Link network

Incoming links, outgoing links, and external brand mentions can improve your hotel’s visibility in AI search by boosting your hotel’s credibility and providing positive social proof. While this is another factor that won’t make or break your visibility, a strong and credible link network will only increase your hotel’s chances of appearing within AI search results.

• Internal links: Linking to other pages within your website makes it easier for AI models to find new pages and understand the connections between your content.
• External links: Linking to outside sources suggests that your content is well-researched and well-connected, improving credibility.
• Incoming links and brand references: When outside sources link to or mention your hotel, that acts as a form of social proof which can improve both credibility and prestige, increasing your hotel’s likelihood of being shown within AI search results.

Social media

Posting on social media isn’t immediately linked to visibility in AI search, but your hotel’s presence on these channels can still have an impact. AI models often source from social media, particularly Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, to determine the overall impression of your hotel.

• Sentiment: Just as business reviews can guide AI models towards quality recommendations, general sentiment from social media comments and customer posts can influence which businesses appear in AI search results.
• Reach: Online buzz with a wide audience reach indicates business credibility and quality to AI models, increasing the likelihood of your hotel being recommended.
• Engagement: When customers are highly engaged with your hotel, this suggests that your business is a quality recommendation that is likely to resonate with users, improving your hotel’s chances of appearing within AI search responses.

Takeaways

AI models use information from a variety of sources across multiple marketing channels when generating responses. However, there’s a common thread among most of these factors: to improve your hotel’s visibility in AI search, focus on the guest experience.

• Develop relevant, thorough content that resonates with your guests. 
• Keep your information up-to-date across all channels.
• Ensure your website is easy to navigate and understand, for both human and robot users.

For tips on getting started with AI search, see our practical action guide to improving AI search visibility or reach out to GCommerce for more information.

The post Hotel visibility in AI search results: Where to start appeared first on GCommerce Solutions.