Philadelphia is the latest area that has been opened up to Google Offers, a competitor for Groupon and Living Social. The Google Offers platform doesn’t open a new concept, but does open another search giant functionality for those of us on the east coast of Pennsylvania.The move puts Google Offers in 15 cities with plans for 25 more in coming months. The initiative beta launched in Portland, Oregon in June.
Marathon Grill happens to be the first offering on Philly’s Google Offers, and so far the functionality looks fairly simple, and like Goupon, Living Social, and other extreme local platforms.
One cool thing you can see is the “Look Inside” function which will take you into the actual restaraunt and see what is out there.
Now, as usual we have to put an SEO or SEM question to the mix and ask “So how does this help our ratings?” Well in my opinion it is simple, it is the next logical extension to their “Places” functionality. First the palces are linked to your site (some people with enough traffic even get a nice places annotation under the typical listing), This enables reviews, comments, pictures, more or less the business Facebook of the business world. Now you can add coupons directly to the mix.
So… add it to the arsenal SEO professionals. This could be another great tool to drive traffic to your ecommerce store, or directly to your brick and mortar if you have one!