Google is changing the search game with photo navigation bar for hotels, restaurants and events (and much more)

Mark this day on your calendar.  Google has been at it again.  And this time, search in the travel and events categories will never be the same again.  It is beautiful and elegant.

But for those that rely on search engine marketing (SEM), paid ads have been bumped down about halfway on the screen, so this may not be such great news.

There is a new search bar below the Web search navigation, which I am dubbing photo navigation.  It shows how many sites that they have that sell each hotel and how many reviews there are.   The left number is the review score (aggregated from Zagats) and the right side shows the number of Google Reviews.    Looks like TripAdvisor has some real competition now.

This is a game changer.