{"id":9698,"date":"2011-04-09T12:15:50","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T16:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=9698"},"modified":"2011-04-18T12:56:12","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T16:56:12","slug":"google-latitude-adds-checkin-offers-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/09\/google-latitude-adds-checkin-offers-nationwide\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Latitude Adds Checkin Offers Nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Yesterday was a busy day for Google local. Google management changes in Local<\/a> & the Hotpot rebranding<\/a> made front page news around the web. An announcement that snuck through the cracks was the limited nationwide rollout of \u00a0check-in offers<\/a> at “thousands of places across the U.S. using Latitude on the iPhone and Android”.<\/p>\n

Offers (aka Coupons) and Latitude have both been step children in the pantheon of Google local products….huge but unrealized potential month in and month out over a fairly long time horizon. But they both seem to have found each of late and are the better for it.<\/p>\n

Coupons, now called Offers<\/a>, a nearly hidden feature in Places for what seems like eons, have often languished. They got their start<\/a> in July of 2006 and received<\/a> some push into 2007. For a while there was appreciable annual growth<\/a> in the numbers of coupons in the system. But\u00a0doubts<\/a> about Google’s willingness to promote coupons surfaced early. By early 2009, amidst no promotion from Google and their failure to showcase coupons in any significant way, Google’s coupon inventory<\/a> showed significant year over year declines. None but the most intrepid consumers could find them and even SMBs that availed themselves of the feature had trouble locating their own coupons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After hitting their low point in early 2009, Google Coupons slowly started receiving limited attention from Google, at first cleaning out old and stale inventory and then \u00a0very sloooowly adding features and slightly increased visibilty. In\u00a0November 2009 \u00a0mobile compatibility<\/a> and in\u00a0June 2010 SMBs were given the ability to highlight<\/a> them on their listing via Tags, potentially giving them front page exposure.<\/p>\n

Shortly before loosing out in their effort to acquire Groupon in November of last year, Google rebranded Coupons as Offers<\/a>. A superficial change but one that indicated that coupons were no longer on life support.<\/p>\n

Google’s intended direction for the coupon aspect of Offers became clearer with a very public test<\/a> in Austin concurrently with the South by Southwest Conference, integrating coupons with Latitude’s Check in process at 60 locations. \u00a0This newest expansion (details visible here<\/a>) of offer checkins leverages some high value coupons at nationwide retailers and eateries:<\/p>\n