In November of 2oo7, I used Google’s coupon search function to estimate the total number of coupons that Google was showing in major markets. Google introduced the coupon program in August 2006 and they announced a partnership with ValPak to help promote coupon use shortly after.

Here are the numbers of coupons in NY, Chicago, San Francsico and Olean as of March, 2008 compared to November 2007:

Google Coupons have been the poor step child of the Maps world since their introduction. They just haven’t gotten any respect. Now though, four months after my first analysis, Google is seeing annualized growth rates of 54% despite the fact that it appears that ValPak now has a significantly lower presence. In fact if you calculate the growth in coupons just from the Local Business Center and remove ValPak from the equation, there has been growth of 171% on an annualized basis.

All of the old questions are still there: Why do they promote the program so little? Will it ever achieve greater exposure? Will it play a role in the world of coupons in the future?

And there now is a new question: Is ValPak cutting back its commitment to Google Coupons?

The total numbers are still low in an absolute sense but the growth rate augurs well given the low overall rates of growth that have been reported elsewhere in the online coupon segment. This growth has occurred despite a lack of promotion, virtually no visibility and a number of bugs in the coupon implementation in the Local Business Center.