CFO Mike Noonan told analysts on the earnings call that organic search will keep dragging on Tripadvisor next year, after a $369.5 million writedown tied to the old hotels operation. Search Engine Journal reported the details on November 8, 2026, drawing on the company’s earnings release and call.
The third-quarter charge is a non-cash goodwill impairment. It sits in Hotels and Other, the unit covering hotel metasearch and media advertising. Tripadvisor’s release attributes it largely to traffic headwinds that have built over several periods because of “changes in the search landscape.” Segment revenue dropped 23% to $151.6 million.
Barclays analyst Ross Sandler asked whether the core brand is nearing Google Zero, meaning a site that receives no organic traffic from Google. Noonan put Tripadvisor’s SEO exposure in the “mid to high teens,” down meaningfully from a year earlier. He did not say what total that figure is a share of, so the number cannot be read as a percentage of traffic, bookings, or revenue.
Noonan said the exposure sits mostly in the legacy Tripadvisor brand, not in Viator, its experiences booking site. He expects the headwind to begin easing on current channel trends, with the eventual tailwind arriving once the company can “mechanically get out of that headwind.” Back in August, Noonan sized the SEO drag on Experiences at roughly 5 points of bookings growth. The third-quarter remarks put it near 3%.
The cost shows up in marketing. Marketing took 48.8% of revenue from continuing operations, up from 43.3% a year earlier, excluding the sold TheFork business. Dollar spending held near flat at $213.0 million, even as revenue declined 11% to $436.4 million. Noonan linked the rise to a shift from free to paid channels.
Paid search is not a clean escape. Goldberg, the CEO, called SEM the largest marketing channel and that “the auctions have certainly become more competitive,” leaving some spend less efficient. Noonan also noted a drop in available SEM clicks in August, which overlapped with a planned move of budget into newer, less scaled channels, and he suggested macroeconomic conditions may explain part of it.
On AI, Goldberg said Viator works with several AI platforms, though the traffic they send is small. He said Tripadvisor’s brands “lead in share of citations for experiences prompts,” but the company did not explain on the call how that share was calculated. He put AI at probably under 1% of overall traffic but ramping, and he believes it converts about 5x the norm on Viator and roughly 2x on Tripadvisor.
The comparison worth making is with the publishers who have already described the same squeeze. Search Engine Journal’s Matt G. Southern pointed to Condé Nast planning for zero search traffic and to Reddit’s October drop in search referrals. Tripadvisor adds a public company’s accounting treatment: an asset write-down, a rising marketing ratio, and a named year for the pain to continue.
Leadership is also changing. Goldberg stays as CEO until mid-February while the board searches for a successor, and Noonan leaves at year-end. Kristen Dalton becomes interim CFO on January 1.
Teams in travel and other marketplace categories can borrow Tripadvisor’s two disclosed metrics, SEO drag on bookings growth and marketing as a share of revenue, as internal benchmarks. The next report’s drag estimate will show whether the roughly 3% figure keeps shrinking or stalls.
Search Engine Journal, Matt G. Southern, published November 8, 2026.
