Toronto-based SEO specialist Sergey Alakov finds that along with other tests in the hotel vertical Google is testing categorizing reviews by traveler type, and showing average hotel ratings for each category.

Categories:

• Couples
• Families
• Solo travelers
• Business travelers

Reviews presented include those from other hotel review sites as well as those left on Google, and can be sorted by helpfulness, recency and high/low scores.

Within each traveler category, Google further breaks down ratings for Rooms, Location and Service & Facilities.

One more move by Google to keep itself the 800# gorilla of online hotel advertising!

(Alakov's article with Google screencaps is here.)