Google Things to Do and Google Business Profile: Getting Your Tours Booked From Google
When someone searches your city's best-known sight, the booking links underneath it decide who gets the booking. Here is how to be one of them.
A traveller searching a landmark, a neighbourhood or "things to do in" a city increasingly sees tours and tickets inside Google itself — with prices, photographs and a row of booking options — before they ever reach a website. Some of those links go to marketplaces. Some go to operators, marked as the official site. The difference is a commission.
This programme changes often, and one popular feature — Business Profile Q&A — no longer exists. What follows reflects the rules as of September 2026; check each detail against Google's current documentation before you rely on it.
Where tours appear on Google
- Things to do. Tours, activities and tickets shown as products, often underneath the landmark they visit, with prices and booking links. The standard listings are free; paid placements sit on top.
- Your Business Profile. The panel that appears when someone searches your business name, and your pin on Maps. It can carry booking links for your own products.
- Maps. Where travellers already in the destination look for what is nearby — and where your profile, photographs and reviews do most of the persuading.
They are connected. Things to do checks your booking links against your Business Profile, and the profile's accuracy shapes what Google says about you everywhere else. Most of the work below improves all three at once.
Earning the Official site link
Among the booking options Google lists, one can carry an "Official site" label. That label tells travellers they are booking with you rather than a reseller, which matters to people wary of paying a middleman — and every booking through it costs you no marketplace commission.
Google's policy for the badge is specific. The booking page must be the same one your own website uses as its primary booking page. It can be on a different domain — a booking system's hosted page, for instance — provided your website clearly links to it. Google checks this against your Business Profile and other trusted data. And the page must be about the product: a specific tour or an overview of your tickets, not a general page that makes the traveller hunt.
In practice that means three things line up: your Business Profile is claimed and accurate, your website links clearly to your booking pages, and the links you send Google are those same pages. When any one of them points somewhere different, the official label is the first thing you lose.
Connectivity partners
Things to do runs on a product feed: prices, availability, descriptions and booking links in a format Google defines. Google strongly recommends that individual operators, and booking systems representing fewer than a hundred operators, supply that feed through an approved connectivity partner rather than building a direct integration. Google publishes the list of approved partners.
For most operators, the practical question is whether the booking system you already use is on that list, and on what terms — some include it, some charge for it. It is also worth searching your own tours on Google: if you list on marketplaces, they may already appear in Things to do through those marketplaces' feeds. Those bookings are real, but they carry the marketplace's commission and send the traveller to its page rather than yours — which is precisely the gap an official link closes. Paid placements are also changing: from the third quarter of 2026, Google is moving travel advertising into new Search campaigns for Travel, which our Google Ads guide covers.
Setting up your Business Profile
Whether or not you reach Things to do, the Business Profile is free, and for many operators it is the most valuable page they have on Google.
- Claim and verify it, with your real business name and a full, accurate address. Things to do booking links on your own profile depend on it.
- Choose the primary category carefully. It is the strongest signal of what you are; pick the one that describes your main business, and add secondary categories only where they are true.
- Write the description for travellers, in plain words: what you run, where, for whom, and how to book.
- Add your tours as products, with a photograph, a from-price and a link to the bookable tour page.
- Point the website link at a page that can take a booking, not a homepage that sends people searching.
- Keep hours and details current, including seasonal closures. An outdated profile is worse than a sparse one.
Then reviews. Ask every guest the same way, soon after the tour, with a direct link — not only the ones who seemed happy. Reply to reviews, including the critical ones, calmly and specifically; travellers read the replies as closely as the reviews.
Photos, posts, and what replaced Q&A
Photographs should show the actual tour: guests, guides, the vehicle, the meeting point, the view. Add new ones each season, so the most recent photographs a traveller sees are genuinely recent.
Posts are useful for what is changing — a seasonal departure, a new tour, a limited offer — and for signalling that the business is active.
Q&A is gone. Google discontinued the Q&A interface in November 2025 and phased out the public section from December. In its place, Google answers questions about a business with AI, drawing on the profile, reviews and the business website. You can no longer post the answer yourself; you can only make sure the answer is findable. That means a complete profile, and a website that states plainly the things travellers ask — duration, meeting point, what is included, accessibility, cancellation terms. Guides that still tell you to curate your Q&A are describing a feature that no longer exists.
Measuring bookings from Google
Google surfaces will send you traffic whether or not you measure it, and without measurement you cannot tell whether an afternoon spent on the profile paid off.
- Tag the links. Add tracking parameters to the website and booking links on your profile, so visits from it are labelled in your analytics rather than merged into "Google".
- Record the source on the booking, so you count bookings, not visits.
- Read the profile's own report — calls, website clicks, direction requests — alongside bookings, since many Maps users phone or walk in.
Then compare what Google-sourced bookings cost you with what the same bookings would have cost through a marketplace. For most operators it is the cheapest direct channel they have, and it is worth knowing by how much — the direct-versus-OTA balance depends on it.
Where Travelity fits
Straight answer: Travelity is not currently documented as an approved Google Things to do connectivity partner, so ask us — as you should ask any booking platform — before planning around that channel. What Travelity does provide is the booking page Google needs to see: the booking widget puts live availability and payment on your own tour pages, which is where your Business Profile's product and website links should point, and every booking lands in one queue alongside those from marketplaces and the phone.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get my tours on Google Things to do?
Your products need to reach Google as a structured feed, and Google recommends that individual operators do that through an approved connectivity partner rather than integrating directly. In practice, that means checking whether your booking system is one. You also need a claimed Google Business Profile with accurate details, and booking pages that match the ones your own website links to.
What is the Official site badge on Google Things to do?
A label on a booking link telling travellers they are booking directly with the operator rather than a reseller. Google may apply it when the booking page is the same one your own website uses as its primary booking page; it can sit on a different domain as long as your site clearly links to it. Google checks this against your Business Profile and other trusted data.
Is Google Things to do free for tour operators?
The standard listings are free: your products can appear with prices and a booking link without paying Google per click. Paid ads are available on top. What the free listings do require is a feed of your products, which for most operators means working with a connectivity partner, and some partners charge for that service.
What happened to Q&A on Google Business Profile?
Google discontinued it. The Q&A interface closed in November 2025 and the public section was phased out from December 2025. In its place, Google answers questions about a business with AI, drawing on the profile itself, reviews and the business website. That makes a complete profile and a clear, accurate website more important than any answer you used to post by hand.
How do I track bookings from my Google Business Profile?
Add tracking parameters to the website and booking links on your profile so visits from it are labelled in your analytics, and check that your booking system records the source of each booking. Then compare bookings attributed to Google with the calls, website clicks and direction requests shown in the profile performance report.
Bottom line
Claim and complete your Business Profile first: it is free, it feeds everything else, and it is now the main source Google's AI uses to answer questions about you. Point its links at pages that can take a booking.
Then find out whether your booking system can put your tours into Things to do, and line up your website, profile and booking pages so the Official site label is yours. Measure what it sends you in bookings, not visits — and check the rules again next quarter.
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