Overview of our holiday rentals partner content policy and enforcement
We strive to support a healthy holiday rentals ecosystem – one that's trustworthy, transparent and works for users and partners. This content policy is designed to ensure a safe and useful experience for our users. This means that our policies prohibit content that is harmful to users and Google's overall holiday rentals ecosystem.
Content commonly includes property name, location, description, photos and other attributes such as the property's capacity, number of beds and bedrooms, number of bathrooms and check-in/check-out times. Content also includes ratings and reviews. Learn more about Google's third-party review policies.
This content policy covers three broad areas:
- Prohibited content: Content that you're not allowed to display on Google
- Prohibited practices: Things that you can't do if you want to partner with Google
- Editorial and technical: Quality standards for your content
To ensure that partners comply with this policy, we use a combination of automated and human reviews. We also conduct periodic human reviews of small batches of individual properties. This is to protect our users and keep our lodging search platforms safe and useful.
We take action on content that violates our policies. This may include the disapproval of violating inventory so that it doesn't serve and suspending accounts for repeat or egregious violations. We will provide you with information on our decision for any policy violation enforcement actions that we take. If one of your properties is disapproved due to a content policy violation, you can fix that property's data or you may have the option to appeal the decision.
You can also appeal an account suspension decision by contacting us via Hotel Centre Help or within your Hotel Centre account.
Prohibited practices and content
Google doesn't allow sites to participate on our platform where we find behaviour that is deceiving, confusing, unsafe, unlawful or abusive to users. We use a combination of automated and human evaluation to detect this type of behaviour, and all potential violations are reviewed by our policy team. More specifics can be found in our Prohibited Practices Policy.
Inappropriate content
Google values diversity and respect for others, and we strive to avoid offending users, so that we don't allow shocking content or content that promotes hatred, intolerance, discrimination or violence. For this reason we don't allow content that is discriminatory, sexually explicit, violent, harmful or that endorses illegal activity.
Editorial and technical
We want to deliver a user experience that isn't annoying or difficult to interact with, so we've developed editorial requirements to help your content be appealing to users. As such, we only allow content that is clear and professional in appearance. Any content shared should lead users to landing pages that are relevant, useful and easy to interact with.
Examples of content that don't meet these editorial and technical requirements: Gimmicky use of words, numbers, letters, punctuation or symbols such as 'FREE', 'f-r-e-e' and 'F₹€€!!' that may be found in the property name, description or even reviews.
Google also provides photo recommendations and best practices for partners interested in optimising how their properties appear.
About our policies
Google requires that partners comply with all applicable laws and regulations and the Google policies described above. This includes maintaining all required licences, registrations and approval for the promotion and sale of services related to any content delivered to Google by the partner. It's important that you familiarise yourself with and keep up to date on these requirements for the places where your business and inventory operate.
When we find content that violates these requirements, we may take action, including (but not limited to) blocking the content from appearing, and in cases of repeated or egregious violations, suspending your account or stopping you from listing your inventory with us.
For EU users
You may have additional redress options. Review the European Union Digital Service Act resolution options for more information.