2020systems Blog

Google has just taken the wraps off Hotpot, an early release of a location-based recommendation engine “powered by you and your friends.”

It’s painfully obvious that location is one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry; Google has been iterating quickly in this area with improvements to Places, Images, Latitude and other services with location features. Its newest foray into the world of location-based services is Hotpot.

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 will be encouraged to rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Users’ 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.

Unlike the just-the-facts, business-friendly interface of Places, Hotpot has a distinctly user-friendly UI that mirrors current trends in web app design. In other words, it’s aimed directly at average consumers, not web junkies who live to search. While Hotpot works well with Places data, its presentation is entirely fresh, both visually and functionally. It presents high-impact data (star ratings and images) for each place in a grid format without introducing too many details — such as phone number or URL — that might not be needed until the user decides to dig down another level or two.

Another part of Hotpot is its social features. Users can create a profile nickname to separate their Hotpot account from their general Google profiles (the whole web can see the Places nickname, but only friends will see the linked Google profile and the user’s real name). 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 “San Francisco Restaurants,” 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.

And it goes without saying that this location-based product from Google integrates with Android out of the box. You can rate and review places on the go with Mobile maps on Android.

We’ve seen Facebook (which recently launched location-based Places features of its own) playing around with place recommendation, but we don’t know that any one method or design has been finalized yet.

Not only has Google beaten Facebook to the punch with its early release of a Places recommendation engine, it’s also giving businesses even more reason to set up Places pages and start thinking about their location-based advertising on Google. After all, more consumers will start their local business searches on Google than just about anywhere else.

By moving the recommendation and review process “in house,” so to speak, by being able to provide an algorithm to recommend sites based on preferences, not merely location, and most importantly perhaps, by integrating these recommendations with mobile, Maps and Search, Google’s Hotpot may be a “killer” location-based app. Sorry, Yelp.

Photo: Google VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer speaks during an announcement September 8, 2010 in San Francisco, California. Google announced the launch of Google Instant, a faster version of Google search that streams results live as you type your query.

Google unveiled today its much hinted new search technology called “Google Instant”, a search engine display that shows results as you type, even predicting what you want before you’re finished writing.

Promoted as “faster than the speed of type,” Google Instant will also be a game-changer for many doing business on the Internet. Google is using new caching systems and JavaScript to help browsers keep up, and displaying relevant research as typed so users can click through content and scroll through predictions.  For the last few days, Google has been using the colorful bouncy balls and light gray text to highlight the new service.

Google Instant means no one will see the same Web anymore. Real-time feedback will change and personalize people’s search behavior.  This means that businesses will have to rethink their SEO and Web strategy to work the new system, although Google states that it won’t change its rankings. Google is also trying to reassure advertisers that Instant will improve the “quality” of clicks on ads but promises nothing, saying overall that it may increase or decrease impressions.

A Note to Advertisers
Under the new system, when someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations:

• The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).

• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.

• The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.