5 Best Practices & Policies

Best Practices and Policies for Optimizing Your Listings

Whether connecting to ‘Things to do’ through a Connectivity Partner or our own Ticket Editor, there are best practices you’ll want to follow to ensure that you optimize your participation in the program, and get your tours discovered.

It’s very important to make sure that you follow Google’s policies and best practices as they relate to your website’s booking pages, and how you set up your pricing and other information. Google actively enforces their policies for participation in ‘Things to do’.

Eligibility for ‘Things to do’

To participate in ‘Things to do’, you should have a Google Business Profile set up, having chosen one of Google’s supported business categories.

In addition, your tours cannot be what Google considers restricted businesses. More detailed information can be found here.

Beyond that, let’s look at some of the requirements and best practices we recommend in order to use ‘Things to do’ to your fullest advantage.

Tour Landing Page & Minimum Website Requirements

To start with, your website should follow the best practices of any good website in terms of speed and design.

‘Things to do’ links to your website’s tour product pages (or the tour page hosted by your booking software, if you’re using a Connectivity Partner). In either case, your tour page should be structured correctly according to Google’s requirements and recommended best practices.

Best practices include:

Clear pathway to book the tour. It must be very straightforward for how the individual tour can be booked.
Total tour price must be clearly visible. At this time, Google does not support ‘pricing upon request’. Learn more below under Pricing Policies.
Current, updated availability. It must be clear when the tour is available to be booked.
Good images (16×9 scale, displaying an image visited on the experience). The best photos don’t look like generic stock images, are unique to your tour, and clearly show the type of experience. You should not use the same images across multiple tour products.
Concise product title
Accurate display of reviews
Use of structured attributes and categories (free cancellation, etc.)
Brief and specific product description
Structured longer information (highlights, inclusions & exclusions, and relevant Points of Interest visited on the tour, etc.)
Accurate information that corresponds to what was submitted to ‘Things to do’.

Multiple tours on a page

Remember, ‘Things to do’ listings link to one specific tour. It is acceptable for the linked page to contain more than one tour product (e.g. a list of several tours), however the desired product option must be easily identifiable when Google checks the landing page, otherwise Google will remove the product.

Please adhere to the following best practices:

Highlight the specific product related to the ‘Things to do’ listing by placing it at the top of the page in a highlighted fashion, including possible larger fonts, images, or different colors.
Alternatively, the product could be pinned to the side of the page, distinct from other products.
Each tour product should have its own distinct image.

Here are some examples of successful tour pages:

Fore more detailed information, visit here.

Pricing Policies

When displaying your tour prices, please make sure to follow our guidelines, outlined below. These exist to give the end user the best possible booking experience.

Please display the total price for your tour including all fees & taxes, which should match the price displayed on the ‘Things to do’ listing. If your booking software charges a booking fee of say 3%, you must include this fee in the price that is loaded and sent to Google.
Display the price for a standard adult ticket. Your ticket price should not be restricted to a certain group (local residents, veterans, etc.). Please note that at this point in time, we do not support Children pricing.
You can list your tour in any currency; the display price on ‘Things to do’ will be converted into the customer’s currency. You should allow the customer to pay in at least one of the following: the customer’s currency based on location or preference, or the currency of the activity’s location. Your tours should be available to be purchased globally, however you can choose to restrict certain countries.
If your tour’s price varies (due to booking window or time of week, for example), you can choose to list any of the prices on ‘Things to do’, provided that price is displayed prominently on the booking page.
If you sell to groups (and require certain group minimums), the price displayed on ‘Things to do’ should be the minimum transaction cost for someone to book your tour.

Google will verify your prices on your website for any policy violations. More detailed pricing information can be found here. Note that if your product was taken down due to a pricing policy violation, it must be fixed and submitted for review by your connectivity partner in order to be re-activated.

Optimizing Your Business Profile

Beyond the above tips for making sure your booking page and pricing are aligned with Google’s policies, it’s also a good idea to optimize your Google Business Profile.

Some easy first steps include:

Adding several photos to your Business Profile
Responding to all your reviews
Filling out all the available profile fields
Keeping your business information up to date

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