To try out Google’s new mobile travel search, simply search: “where to go in [the country of your choice]”. For the examples below, I searched for France.

Google will display the two most popular destinations in the country searched for, as well as an inviting blue button which will show more. When you tap the “more destinations” button, you will also have the option of filtering the results to match your interests, as you can see below.

Once a destination has caught your attention, tapping on it will give you a detailed profile, offering (where appropriate) flights, accommodation, high-quality photos and more.

Whilst Google’s new mobile interface does provide a high-quality user experience, it could be damaging for travel brands who rely on organic search traffic, as it essentially demotes organic search results. The initial “Destinations” pop-up is so large that on many devices, even the sponsored results aren’t visible without scrolling down. In addition to this, once you have tapped the blue “more destinations” button, you can only see the organic search results by clicking back or searching again.

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Is Google creating mobile interfaces like this purely for customer experience? It seems unlikely. All of the options under the “plan a trip on Google” header perform a new Google search, for which the results are often prefaced with Google’s own comparison services at the top - obscuring organic results, as seen below:

By driving users to their own services, whilst reducing the visibility of organic search results, Google is making life a lot more difficuly for comparison websites such as Confused.com or Compare the Market. With their ability to promote their own services at the top of any search result page they see fit, Google could pose a grave threat to those in the comparison industry.

In addition to this, these mobile interfaces and comparison services could have serious repercussions for brands who rely heavily on their high search engine rankings. It doesn’t matter how highly you rank if users immediately click on Google’s offering, which is always above your website.

Google’s new mobile interface should also ring alarm bells for publishing and media companies in the travel sector - if Google have begun writing their own content to include in this new interface, everyone from Wikipedia to The Daily Mail and Lonely Planet or even Trip Advisor could expect drastically reduced search visibility.

So what can marketers do if their content is becoming harder to find for the average user? One option is to invest in other channels, such as TV and radio. Comparison websites such as Compare the Market and Go Compare have opted for multi-million pound TV and radio advertising campaigns, that focus on brand building and generating direct traffic.

Another option is to investigate a partnership and have your brand featured as one of the choices Google offers in their comparison services. It isn’t always entirely clear how to get included among the brands that are shown in Google’s comparisons, but be prepared to pay the piper.

Google’s new interface and the sudden de-prioritising of search results is an example of why marketers need to be agile and ready to adapt. It is important to ensure that you build diversity into your strategy and have the flexibility to change as the marketing landscape requires. It is also worth keeping an eye on Google; both the new services they bring out and even the lesser known services they already provide - did you know that you can compare credit cards and search public data with Google?