How not to book a hotel

First stop San Francisco...alcatraz..golden gates...fishermans wharf...cable car....finding a hotel, no problem! Actually big problem there are something like 250 hotels to choose from, then there's apartment rentals, hostels, b&bs, talk about overload. Then to decide how much to spend. What is a reasonable amount to spend per night? It's a dilemma between wanting to have a nice hotel and thinking about the fact that we'll probably be out exploring the city so won't get to enjoy the hotel anyway.
So I referred to tripadviser for ratings...straight away the top 50 or so hotels are out due to our budget...so onto hotel booking websites to check for specials....hotels.com; expedia.com.au; octopus.com; easytobook.com; agoda.com; hotelclub.com; webjet.com; olotels.com; webjet.com; you get the idea!

After spending an average of an hour per night for about a week browsing the sites, and coming up with a pretty similar price every time, I ended up going for a nice three star so we can enjoy the city without having to worry about coming back to a group of drunken backpackers every night....there will be plenty of time for that in Canada!