The Rural Hotel with 31 Reviews That Didn't Appear on Google: What Changed in 5 Months

We had 4.6 stars and still didn't show up

Hotel Rural La Encina is two and a half hours from Madrid, in the Trujillo area. Twelve rooms, an estate with centuries-old holm oaks, homemade breakfast. We've been here since 2008 and survived everything they threw at us: the property crash, the pandemic, summers without foreign tourists.

What we couldn't survive was Google.

We had 31 reviews and a 4.6-star average. Not bad. In fact, I thought it was a good number. But my daughter, who works in marketing in Madrid, looked at our listing and told me: "Dad, with 31 reviews you don't show up when people search for rural hotels in Extremadura. You need volume."

I didn't understand at first. Wasn't having a good rating enough? Apparently not. Google needs quantity as well as quality.

The problem wasn't that guests were leaving unhappy. Quite the opposite. We have a notebook at reception where people write beautiful things. The problem is that those same guests went back to their lives in Madrid or Barcelona and simply didn't think about Google Maps. They'd had a wonderful experience, but without a small nudge, that experience never became a review.

I started sending a WhatsApp when guests checked out. Not a cold corporate message, something warmer, asking how the stay had gone. If they responded well, the system guided them to Google.

What I discovered surprised me greatly.

People don't write short reviews when they visit a rural hotel. They write paragraphs. They talk about the sunrise from the terrace, the deer they spotted at dusk, the homemade fig jam at breakfast. Two different guests specifically mentioned that fig jam. I never would have guessed, but apparently it's memorable.

Those long, specific reviews did something I hadn't expected: they helped me appear in very precise searches. Searches I wouldn't even have thought to make myself: "charming rural hotel Extremadura," "quiet hotel near Trujillo," "hotel with homemade breakfast in Cáceres." The exact words guests used in their reviews are precisely the words other travellers use when searching.

After five months, I had 89 reviews and a 4.8-star average. I started appearing in those searches. I started receiving bookings from people who would never have found me through the usual channels.

There was something I didn't expect: the effect on the guests themselves. Several have told me that writing the review made them realise how much they'd enjoyed themselves. As if the act of writing consolidated the memory. I find that rather beautiful, though perhaps I'm a romantic.

The reception notebook is still there. But now it also exists on Google.