Understanding Google Places & Local Search – Developing Knowledge about Local Search

Google Places is now rolling out a new Offers creation program in the Places Dashboard to accompany the new Google Maps for Android. The product is significantly more robust than the current product and offers a range of creation options. There is an overview and FAQ available the Offers introduction page.

It is now live in my Places Dashboard. Click this image to view a slide show of the creation options:

Features:

When you enter the Offers area of the Dashboard old offers are visible but not editable. It appears that older Offers created in the Dashboard will be maintained until their expiration date but can not be updated.

The Offer design interface is very slick and provides simple choices to create the coupon.

Only photos from Google existing library can be used. This is a limitation of your products fall out of the narrow range they have chosen.

You are allowed to limit the total quantity of offers available, the timeframe they are available and whether a user may re-use the coupon. Interestingly the offer can be limited to only certain days of the week.

The management interface shows how often the offer was saved by users and how often it was redeemed.

New offers are currently only appear on Google Maps for Android, Google Offers and Google Wallet apps. As far as I can tell they are not visible on the desktop and have no presence on the iPhone.

An offer can be easily edited after creation to change the expiration or distribution settings in the original offer.

An interesting note in the How it Works area of the Offers area notes that offer is only free during limited-time trial period. (bold mine)

The Google Offers Help files have been updated to reflect the new product.

Limits to the new product:

This product is significantly more robust than the current product. But it does not appear to be available for display in desktop search and the fact that there is no iPhone version limits its use. What Google’s plans are in either area are unclear at the moment.

Also unclear is whether it will remain free in some capacity and when it does move to a paid model how it will be priced. The FQ notes: Currently, you can create offers from within your Google Places account at no cost during this limited time trial period. You will be notified about pricing details before the trial period concludes.

Offers (aka Coupons) have a long and sorry history in the panoply of Google local products. They were introduced to great fanfare in 2008 and then left to whither with little support and less ability to display them. Over the past year Google has been cleaning up inappropriate Offers but they have never made them more visible. This is only a partial step in that direction.

Given their limited availability on the Android product it would appear that Google is moving them away from the desktop and primarily focusing on their use in the mobile environment. Obviously they would be more valuable if they could be crossed marketed from the main search results and available on all mobile platforms. Hopefully that is in the cards.

Given the recent noise about Facebook reintroducing/testing their Offer product, one has to wonder about Google’s timing of this release and whether they will emulate the idea of making the coupon more visible with payment.

The Future:

When used in a mobile environment and tied to the new patents that Google acquired for indoor location via Wifi one can easily envision a coupon system that could could offer a given coupon when in close proximity to a participating vendor AND close the loop on the sale (with or without the use of electronic payments). Obviously the potential for relevant delivery and knowledge about when the sale is closed opens up a range of revenue analytic possibilities for Google.

On a more short term note we are seeing the Places Dashboard slowly but surely getting a face lift to come under the new integrated Google UI. First the Adwords Express UI update and now Offers. It is clear that the Places Dashboard (and hopefully Places Analytics) are soon slated for updates as well.

The ability to provide a Google check-in offer is now live. The feature has been added to the Offer coupon creation option in the Google Places dashboard and a detailed help file has been added to Places for Business Help area. Google describes the process as follows:

The process to create a check-in offer is very simple. Select the Offers tab in the Places dashboard and answer the last question in the affirmative: (more…)

Last week I reported out a discovered Google Places Help page (since taken down but visible here) that discussed using the Places Coupons as a Check-in Coupon for Google Plus. This afternoon the folks at VentureBeat received a confirmation from Google that check-in offers from Places will be coming to Google+ next week:

“While prepping for a test of a new check-in offer feature, we published a support center article a little early and have since removed the article. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused. Please stay tuned for roll out of this feature for merchants, which we’re targeting for next week.”

Hints of a Places based check-in offer surfaced as far back as May when it appeared that they would be heading to Lattitude. Obviously the roll out of Plus shortly after that changed Google’s plan.

Offers have a long and sorry history in Google Places. Originally introduced as Coupons in 2007, they were largely hidden from public view for most of their existence. Google Coupons saw some successes during 2007 and 2008 having partnered up with ValPak but by early 2009 Places coupons had completely tanked due to lack of visibility. They made a brief reappearance in the main search results along with the Google’s fixed price local ad product Tags in June, 2010. In November of last year, Google changed the name of the free Place based Coupons to Offers just before the failed acqusition talks with Groupon and the subsequent roll-out of Groupon like deals called, confusingly, Offers.

Will the oft maligned Places Coupons Offers finally get their day in the sun? A free, easy to use check-in offer might give the feature much needed exposure and a new life, motivating smbs to revisit the Places feature and perhaps also leading them to think seriously about a Google Plus business page.

While perusing the Google Places Offer Help files I found a page discussing Check-in Offers via Google+. It notes:

If your customers have to visit your locations in order to do business with you, you can request that they check-in on Google+ in order to redeem your offers. They can choose to share the check-in publicly or with some of their circles, which helps spread the word about your business on Google+. They can also choose to keep their check-in private and still redeem an offer.

If your customers do not have to visit your location, for example if you serve homes or businesses by delivery or by callouts, you can keep this option off (set to “No”) and customers will not be asked to check-in when they redeem offers. We use the Service Areas and Location Settings setting on your listing to determine if you have a service area for offers that have already been created. When you create new offers, you can choose whether to allow a check-in during redemption.

The option is not yet visible within the Places Offers tab. Google recently started purging the free Offers created in Places if they did not offer a real discount of some sort. Perhaps that was in anticipation of Google + integration of check-in.

Google has started rejecting Offers from Google Places for quality and policy violations. Business owners that have had Offers rejected will receive an email with a clear indication of which guideline was not satisfied. Offers that do not provide actual % discounts or dollar value off will be suspended. Google has upgraded their Google Help with a Troubleshooter Your Offers Form if an a business owner feels that an offer was rejected inappropriately. Here is a recently sent rejection email:

From: googleplaces-noreply@google.com
Date: December 2, 2011 5:27:40 AM EST
To: xxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Important: Some of your offers on Google have been marked as suspended

Hello,

Thank you for creating an offer for your Google Places page. We’ve found that one or more of your offers does not meet our guidelines. These offers have been suspended and are listed below. Your Google Places listing is not otherwise changed and remains active.

Offer with summary: Free Consult w/ Attorney, created: Dec 11, 2009.

Reasons for suspension:
Offer does not include a monetary discount or an additional good or service that is not normally included.

You can review the Offers Guidelines in the Places for Business Help Center here.

To create a new offer, visit Places for Business.

Offers that violate policy will be suspended. Please ensure that your new offer follows the offers policies listed in the Help Center. You cannot edit an offer once it has been suspended.

This message was sent from a notification-only email address so email responses will not be seen. If you have any questions, please review the Google Places for Business Help Center.

Sincerely,
The Google Places Team

From the guidelines:

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Google’s Boost advertising product was meant to be a dead simple way for a small business that had claimed their Places listing, to place a locally highlighted ad onto the front page of Google. It is simple to get started and in some situations, where the targeting is accurate and the price per click is reasonable, it can be a very effective advertising product. In a  very limited sample size it has worked to the clear benefit of the business about 50% of the times that I have tried it.

But the simplicity of the system hides a deeper complexity in pricing that is sure to confuse and anger most SMBs sooner or later: the bid pricing. These two screen shots tell the tale.

Up until June 15th, this campaign was generating click throughs at a reasonable cost. However somewhere along the line (neither the charts, nor the product interface make this explicit nor discoverable), the cost per click jumped from $4.68 a click to over $20, rapidly running through the budget and it resulted in the ad stop being displayed.

A call to a Boost support person (a 1+ to Google on providing phone support to all SMBs) indicated that “there was probably some external event had caused the bid for the ad to go up rapidly”. A review of the Boost help files made no mention of  the fact that the pricing was bid dependent. In fact there no explanation AT ALL of pricing and how it is determined. Simple all right, too simple by half.

This lack of transparency on pricing will be a death knell of the product in the SMB market. What small business person would be happy with 4x price hike that occurs unannounced? What small business person understands the possibility of a bidding war taking the ad offline? What small business person wouldn’t be surprised that an ad that had been working well for the previous 3 months suddenly went in the toilet? And what small business person, when he called Google was told ”there was probably some external event had caused the bid for the ad to go up rapidly”, would be a happy, educated camper?

Here is the screen shot of the preceding month for comparison. It is very similar to what the client saw in the account for the previous 3 months:
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It has been clear from day one that the Google Offers daily deals were coming to both San Francisco and New York City. We just didn’t know when. THe NYC daily offers started this AM with 3 offers, one each from NYC Downtown, NYC Midtown and NYC Uptown. The deals rolled out in NYC are all moderately priced at $10/50% off and are for food ( Belgian fries, chocolates and cupcakes). Like the more recent deals in Portland, Google is no longer making explicit how many of the deals are available.

The Offers page suggests that Offers are now also available from Oakland and San Francisco although no deals were yet to be found for those cities.

And in an apparent expansion, Offers will soon be available in Austin, Boston, Denver, DC and Seattle:

T

@Webmanagementus of Web Management pointed out this Tracfone Adwords ad that includes a Coupon attached to the ad. I had not seen this previously although Greg Sterling had reported on seeing them in the wild on SEL last week. It clearly indicates Google’s desire to expand the roll of coupons as a revenue generator. It is an obvious fit for local for both Boost and Adwords with location extensions although this current test is obviously neither:

Coupons have had a long a tortuous life at Google. They were introduced in late 2006 and but left to languish for a number of years before seeing some activity in late 2009 and through 2010 with the Tags Beta. 2010 culminated with the failed effort to purchase Groupon.

2011 on the other hand has seen lots of other activity on the coupon front for Google. Besides the new Adwords coupon test first seen last week, rumors of Google Offers, their Groupon competitor, first surfaced in January, with a full blown Offers beta rolling out June 1 in Portland. Google also first rolled out Latitude Check-In Offers at SXSW in March with a limited national test in April. They cancelled the Tags product in April as well. Roll out early, iterate often and shit can anything that doesn’t generate enough profit seems to be the coupon approach.

Here is a chart of Google’s current free, paid and cancelled products…

Much like the trend on Places for links on Google to head off to other Google properties, this new product takes you to a Google page. (more…)

There have been questions about Google’s desire and willingness to ramp up face to face sales in local markets. Their attempted acquistion of Groupon seemed be to focused on a quick development of an on-the-ground, locally focused sales team. Discussions about their early efforts and ability to succeed in selling local revolve around this question. Last week’s job postings indicated that they were looking for new hires in Seattle for “Commerce Sales team [members which will] play a critical role in growing Google’s new Commerce related businesses, such as Google Offers, through large-scale SMB acquisition programs.”

Today while searching the Google Jobs posting for similar positions (Field Rep, Field Sales Manager, First Sales Team Lead & Head of Field Sales for Commerce Sales) I found at least 64 Offers postings for the following cities:

• Commerce Sales – San Francisco
• Commerce Sales – Atlanta
• Commerce Sales – New York
• Commerce Sales – Austin
• Commerce Sales – Boston
• Commerce Sales – Washington, D.C.
• Commerce Sales – Denver
• Commerce Sales – Seattle
• Commerce Sales – Los Angeles
• Commerce Sales – Oklahoma City
• Commerce Sales – Minneapolis
• Commerce Sales – St. Paul
• Commerce Sales – Pittsburgh
• Commerce Sales – Chicago
• Commerce Sales – Houston
• Commerce Sales – Philadelphia
• Commerce Sales – Baltimore
• Commerce Sales – Dallas

I guess that puts to rest the question of whether Google is developing a local sales presence.

Not being well versed in the deals arena I wanted to better understand Google’s baby steps with their Offers product. I turned to a number of respected folks, that have more experience in the field than I to get their sense of Google’s progress in their newest local effort. Here is the discussion thread from earlier in the week where Greg Sterling, Jim Moran, Sebastien Provencher, David Mihm, Sol Orwell, Rocky Argawal and Andrew Shotland gave their impressions of Google’s efforts to date based on these sales numbers in Portland.

Google Offer’s Beta in Portland started on June 1 and there have been 12 deals through the first two weeks of June. Google seems to be serious in their committment to the market. They are putting feet on the ground in Portland and elsewhere, including NYC. They have started hiring sales staff for a direct sales team for Offers and other local endeavors. But it would seem that getting from here to there (wherever there is) is no small task.

Here is a summary of the deals to date and projected dollar amount generated for Google for the past 2 weeks:

Is this first two weeks a success? Is it an abject failure? Does it just point out how far Google has to go before they are successful? Here’s what Greg Sterling, Jim Moran, Sebastien Provencher, David Mihm, Sol Orwell, Rocky Argawal and Andrew Shotland had to say:

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