Google has just unveiled Hotpot, an early release of a location-based recommendation engine. As the owner of an online marketing company that helps many local businesses, this announcement is particularly newsworthy for us and our clients.

Local search and location based services is a fast growing segment and one that is particularly pertinent to our clients. To capitalize on this fast growing segment and stay ahead of the competition, Google has recently released several improvements in this area including those to Places, Images, Latitude and other services with location features. Hotpot is its latest entrant into the world of location-based services.

Hotpot takes all of Google Places’ ratings and reviews features and adds a more personal touch. Currently, Place Pages mostly aggregate review data from sources such as Yelp. With Hotpot, users can rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Your ratings and reviews are tracked with a counter at the top of each profile, and likes and dislikes are remembered and used in Google’s recommendation engine.

Hotpot has an easy to use user interface geared towards the average consumer. It presents star ratings and images for each place in a grid format and doesn’t get bogged down with too many details.

Hotpot is also designed to capitalize on another big trend – social. Users can create a profile nickname to separate their Hotpot account from their general Google profiles. Google uses Gmail accounts and linked Google profiles to help users find their friends. Friends’ reviews and ratings will be visible, and users will get recommendations based on what their friends like.

When you search for specific places, such as “Italian Encinitas,” in Hotpot, you can filter your search results to see businesses or other places you haven’t rated before; you can also choose to see only places that have been rated by your Hotpot friends.

If you haven’t already set up your Google Places page, now would be a great time to do so. You want to make sure that your business shows up in local searches and that you give customers the opportunity to tell their friends how great your product or service is. Additionally, Hotpot should open even more location-based advertising doors for businesses.

Although Facebook is going after this segment with their recently released Places feature, it is likely, at least in the short term that most consumers will start their local business searches on Google.

If you have any questions about Hotpot or location-based search, contact us at OrganikSEO.com

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