Google’s revs travel down as vacations delayed

Google’s ad business is experiencing a major slowdown due to the coronavirus-battered travel industry.

The search giant will see its ad revenue drop for the first time in more than a decade, according to data from research firm eMarketer, as the travel industry — normally one of the platform’s most rock-solid spenders — pulls back as vacationers have been forced to stay at home for months because of the pandemic.

Google’s US ad revenue is projected to decline 5.3 percent by the end of the year, to $39.6 billion. The drop, eMarketer says, cuts the Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s market share from 31.6 percent to 29.4 percent.

The research firm first began tracking Google’s numbers in 2008, and Monday’s report represents the first time it has ever projected a decline.

“Ad revenues will decline this year primarily because of a sharp pullback in travel advertiser spending, which in the past has been heavily concentrated on Google’s search ad products,” eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin said.

Perrin added that e-commerce spending is down, noting that Amazon pulled its ads from Google search earlier in the pandemic as it struggled to keep up with customer demand for its products.

Separately on Monday, Google said it will start identifying some misleading photos in its specific search tool for images with a fact-check label, expanding that function beyond its standard non-image searches and videos, as misinformation is rampant online.

The fact-check label will appear on any image that is included in an article that fact checks a photo or another claim. A larger preview of the photo will show a short summary of the factcheck and direct users to its source.

The company has used these factchecking labels for years in its main search results and on video-streaming site YouTube. In December, Google said fact-checks appear more than 11 million times each day in search results.

“Photos and videos are an incredible way to help people understand what’s going on in the world,” Google product manager Harris Cohen wrote in a blog post announcing the new fact-check labels. “But the power of visual media has its pitfalls — especially when there are questions surrounding the origin, authenticity or context of an image.”