Find the cheapest hotel in seconds

I just tried this for a small town I like to visit. The search worked great for motels that were medium priced and up. Lower priced motels, such as Motel 6, did not show up. The independently owned motels didn't show up either.

This appears to be a good place to start when looking for a motel, but you still need to do some research if you want to be sure you found the best place.

I tried a search on Chicago. It is a great tool to get a visual rundown of all the hotels and locations. I think this interface to get an idea of what is where is better than any of the other search sites. But every hotel listed had the rack rate price. Certainly not a deal. I still think using Betterbidding.com + priceline & hotwire is going to get you a far better deal. But using this site combined with those would make figuring out what is available in the various zones would make figuring out the hotels presented on sites like hotwire even easier combined with betterbidding.

Since we were getting $350 rooms for $120 both times we booked in downtown Chicago it is certainly worth a bit of extra time. I would still use this new site to get a really good idea of the lay of the land. Another good one is Tripadvisor.com. I found out more info about hidden fees, what to avoid and things like where cheaper parking is there than anywhere else.

I compared this website against www.sidestep.com , which is my usual flight/hotel search engine.

Sidestep found consistently cheaper rates, so I recommend using that instead.

I think one of the best ways of knowing if a hotel will suit your needs is reading reviews of other hotel guests. Sometimes pictures can give a nice impression but they don't show how the mattress feels or how noisy it is. The only way of knowing this on forhand is by reading the findings of others. Right?

I tried Las Vegas. The rates shown on the summary page didn't match the rates when I clicked through. Also, a lot of the returned results were from reservetravel.com, which has terrible reviews online (including a review on ripoffreport).

No question about the lowest prices... and this is verified by motel clerks and motel managers. Coupon book prices even beat "member" prices.
The downside is that your room may be 2nd floor, though we usually get first floor if we ask.
It's the coupon books that are available at State Managed Rest/Information stops (and usually at quick stop stores and many restaurants). We're not world travellers, but can speak for the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.
The books that we find to be the best are the Red Cover and Green Cover books. We never make reservations, and have only been turned away once about 10 years ago, when a college Homecoming game filled all motels. (We "motel" about 10 - 15 nights/year).
Very common for us to check at the same time as someone in front of us who has a reservation and gets AARP or AAA discount. Very typical that their rate is $59-$69 while our rate is $39 to $49. (route from Illinois to Florida where rates are lower than in major cities.)
Of course you have to be flexible, because you can't book the rooms at these prices in advance, and if you are arriving after about 7-8PM, the rooms that were set aside for the coupon trade, may be gone. (In which case you just go to the next motel on the list, or drive 15 miles to the next town.) We almost always plan to check in before 6, and always get a room.
You can pretty much depend on prices about $15 - $20 under rack price... and... make no mistake about it... without the coupon... no special price.
In some towns, the top price hotels are not in the coupon books, but usually all of the majors are.
The coupon books used to have websites, but no more... so if you're planning on going cross country, you'd better get into the state where you'll stay, before 5 or 6PM, when some of the information services close for the day.