I’ll be in Dublin in a couple of weeks, speaking at Search Marketing World and I’m staying a few extra days to hang out with friends. I was looking for a hotel downtown and did a Google search for the best hotel to stay in downtown dublin.
Apparently, it’s the Leeson Inn.
(In case you see different search results than I do, 8 of the top 10 results are for that hotel.)
I can’t imagine this is the result of search engine manipulation, since all kinds of sites are showing up, including Yahoo! and Trip Advisor, which as far as I know, are separately owned. (Although in this age of user-contributed content, I suppose we could be seeing a new era of review manipulation for SEO purposes, as Larry points out in the comments.)
Is the Leeson Inn really the definitive answer to my question?