Hotel Booking Sites

I needed a last minute hotel when my Grandson was born.
I called the number for the best listed (price-review) hotel in Trivago and it sent me to Reservationdesk.com
They sent me a confirmation email and text at about 11PM.
When I called the hotel at 2 AM they said they didn't have a reservation and none were available.
When I called Reservationdesk.com back they said they'd check and called back saying something went wrong and they were sorry.
When I looked up the hotel in google it had a 3.5 rating.

I called another hotel directly and the reservation clerk was very open and told me rates would be about 30% less at places like expedia, hotels.com and booking.com.
So I started looking at reviews of booking sites.
Consumer Reports didn't have a review, but said aggregators (sites that look up rates on other sites) didn't always find the best rate.
Here's a couple of places that had reviews.

Best and Worst Hotel Booking Sites for 2019 | Frommers.com the famous powerhouses like Expedia/Travelocity, Hotels.com, and Trip.com didn’t even make the cut this year.

1 HotelsCombined 
2 Trip Advisor 
3 Kayak.com  
4 booking.com 
5 Google.com/travel/hotels

10 Best Sites for Booking Hotels (UPDATED: AUGUST 2019) – The Hotel Expert

1. Booking.com – best prices, most reliable, easiest to use (Tom recommends)
2. HotelsCombined.com – cheap hotels and last minute bookings
3. Agoda.com – good for hotels in Asia
4. TripAdvisor – widest selection
5. Hotels.com – good for large hotel chains
6. Priceline – best when flexible
7. HostelWorld – great for hostels and budget hotels
8. Trivago – good price comparison website
9. Hotwire – good for flight & hotel combinations
10. HotelTonight – best hotel app

Aggregators:
Trip Advisor
google.com/travel/hotels