Google to target 40,000 local business reviews in Charlotte

Google plans to target some 40,000 small businesses in Charlotte in the next phase of the search engine's expansion into the advertising-rich field of local business reviews - a move that has sparked tension with local review sites like Yelp.com.

Google officials announced today that they are making the Queen City the fifth in the nation where they'll roll out a beefed-up marketing campaign for their new Google Hotpot service. Hotpot, which is a new part of Google Places, allows customers to leave reviews and recommendations of local businesses, similar to what services like Yelp have been doing for years.

Google officials in recent days have mailed promotional materials to thousands of Charlotte businesses, urging them to log onto the service and put in basic information Google-searching potential customers might want to know about their goods and services.

That's free, but companies can also buy advertising to further tout themselves. On the consumer end, Google searchers who create a Hotpot account and begin rating and reviewing local businesses will get search results increasingly personalized depending on the types of businesses and services they tell Google they like and dislike.

The Hotpot reviews will show up on a business' Google Places page, as well as on Google Maps.

The service is also available through smartphone apps, allowing customers to rate and review in real time. Highly rated businesses get a "recommended on Google" sticker to go in their windows.

Google's already launched marketing campaigns in Las Vegas, Portland, Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisc. Jeff Aguero, a marketing manager for Google, said the company chose Charlotte because of its tech-savvy population, large small business community and the level of interest in existing Google products shown by the area.

"Charlotte was one of the areas that not only fit a great profile of younger (people) who were looking forward to taking on new technology, but it also had a great base for us to start from," he said.

Search engine advertising revenues have soared as people searching for goods and services increasingly turn to the internet rather than the Yellow Pages or other traditional media.

Online advertising revenues topped $12 billion for the first half of 2010 alone, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a research group comprised of more than 460 leading media and technology firms. Advertising via search engines accounted for nearly half of the total.

Yelp, which has for years been getting its "Yelpers" to write detailed reviews of local businesses to help guide other consumers, has voiced irritation with Google's new service. Yelp reviews show up on Google Places pages, but Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has said he doesn't like the way Google is using Yelp's information and that he considers Google directly competitive.

Asked about such tensions, Aguero said Google values its relationships with its partners. He added: "The primary goal is to give as much information as possible to our users."

Corey Creed, a Charlotte-based search engine marketing consultant, said there's so much money to be made in local online advertising that large companies like Google are determined to find their way into local markets, even if it means tensions with other online firms.

"Nobody wants to use the Yellow Pages, they want to go online" to find things, said Creed, head of Hippo Internet Marketing. "It's just a big huge gold mine sitting there."

Source http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/03/30/2183715/google-to-push-charlotte-local.html