In a move that underscores the link between online research and offline shopping, Google will offer printable coupons for selected searches on its Google Maps feature.
The first phase of the initiative will partner Google with Valpak Direct Marketing Systems, a division of Cox Enterprises, and will offer 20,000 coupons from current Valpak marketers, updated daily. Valpak already offers printable coupons over its Web site as well as via direct mail.
Local business owners can add the coupons, co-branded as both Google and Valpak offerings, to their business profiles in the Google Local Business Center. The service is free to owners. Google will also allow them to submit their offers directly, without going through Valpak or other coupon distributors with whom the company is holding partnership talks.
Users will not be able to search specifically for Valpak offers; instead they will be automatically displayed for appropriate Google Maps searches such as “dry cleaner Boston” and “Brooklyn pizza”, as clickable icons next to the business names. Nor will Google add the coupons to its own general search results pages. But Google director of product management Gokul Rajaram said the company expects to let business owners use pay-per-click search ads to drive traffic to their coupon pages.
Many Web sites offer printable coupons for local merchants based on a user’s geography, including CoolSavings, CouponSurfer.com and Valpak itself. Zixxo recently introduced a self-service platform that lets local enterprises automate the creation and delivery of performance-based coupons; the service is free now, but plans are to charge merchants a small fee only when users actually print the offers.
But Google is the first to put these discounts in front of searchers who are actively looking for a business or service provider in their neighborhood. And the connection to Google Maps should turn out to be a powerful one. The site had 23 million unique visitors in July, almost a 100% increase in traffic year over year, according to comScore Media Metrix.
In addition, Google is interested in encouraging small businesses without Web pages to get involved in search marketing for the first time. Local companies will spend $1 billion on search ads this year, according to research from Borrell Associates, more than twice last year’s figure. But by some estimates there are still as many as 14 million businesses in the U.S. that don’t have Web sites and thus would not benefit from pay-per-click ads. Online coupons in Google Maps would give them something to spend search marketing money against, if they will indeed be able to draw users to the profiles where their coupons reside.
It would also pique their interest in tending to their Google Local business profile. Like most local directory services, Google acquires much of its information about local businesses from third-party sources but lets those merchants update their profiles directly. Adding the couponing feature might encourage these owners to expand and update their local listing data, giving Google Local more to work with in the competition to dominate the local directory space.
The benefits of the partnership for Valpak—or other coupon distributors Google may strike deals with—are less clear, since direct-mail coupon distributors earn their income directly from advertisers. The prospect of a competing free coupon service from a brand as powerful as Google may have presented Valpak with a join-or-die dilemma in the same way that Google Checkout could erode the business model for eBay’s PayPal.
But the possibility does exist for peaceful co-opetition. After all, Verizon Superpages operates in the same online directory space as Google Local but also resells Google search ads to some of its advertisers. Todd Leiser, vice president of Valpak.com, was quoted in press reports as saying that the notion of Valpak reselling of Google search ads was “not out of the realm of possibility.”