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12.14.09 Local Businesses Get A Boost With Google's New Service  By Rene LeMerleResearch over the last few years has proven that reviews and advice from family, friends and colleagues are the key buying influencers. No advertising or PR can outweigh the value of a good personal recommendation. Realizing the importance of peers in the buying decision, Google has just rolled out a new initiative to help people "decide where to shop, eat or hang out, with a little help from local Google users?" Google is bringing the value of public recommendations and reviews easily to the Google Local service - helping you find the best places to spend your time and money. From the launch post: …we've launched a new effort to send window decals to over 100,000 local businesses in the U.S. that have been the most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps. We're calling these businesses the "Favorite Places on Google" and you'll now start to find them in over 9,000 towns and cities, in all 50 states. The windows decals provide a QR Code which visitors can scan using their various smart phones. By scanning a business' Google decal with QR Code, you're taken straight to their business listing with reviews, additional information and discount coupons - all at your disposal.  If you're unfamiliar with QR Codes - they're a 2 dimensional barcode which can be scanned by phones to provide access to a host of information (e.g. URLs, addresses etc). Google is working hard to blur the lines between offline and online for their local business customers and this is definitely a great initiative for consumers. Whilst there's only 100,000 business with the decals at the moment, Google will surely have a plan to roll this out on a mass scale. And at that point - Businesses will be severely disadvantaged if they haven't got their online local presence in order. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Rene is the marketing manager of ineedhits.com - a global search engine marketing company. He also leads the marketing for Gooruze.com - a web 2.0 style community for online and digital marketers. Rene has been in the industry since 1997 with much of that time spent helping businesses embrace the best of the internet and digital world. |
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