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Google HotPot a Great Idea With a Silly Name
Google released HotPot about two weeks ago and so far I have used it several times and like it. I have to say if you have not checked it out you definitely should. If you are a local selling and serving business, you for sure need to come up to speed with HotPot as it will be incredibly more important to your business in the months to come.
First check it out here: http://hotpot.google.com. I think it has a stupid name and should have been named something more indicative of the service, but if you think about it, reviews stir the pot of attention so maybe HotPot works. Not sure who was at what bar with what drinks under their belt at Google when they dreamed the HotPot name up.
Never the less, once you start to use HotPot you will understand the this is one powerful tool that you will definitely want to encourage others to use to help your own business. First HotPot is very similar to Four Square. In fact so much so you may say – hey did they steal this idea. Well most likely they did as Google is not incredibly creative on its own, its MO is to see something they like and then knock it off.
If you have a Google account, you have a HotPot account. The great thing about HotPot is that it is a web interface and not solely a mobile interface like Four Square. Additionally, HotPot ties in directly with Google Places. Have you wondered how reviews appear now on your Google Places account? Well they are now going to come in via HotPot.
I personally just reviewed two restaurants that I ate at in the last two weeks. Both got 5 stars from me. Not only can you star rate a local business or place, but you can leave a comment and rate service, ambiance, and value. When your review is done, you get another review registered on your HotPot account. You can add friends automatically with which you will share reviews. I think that Google is pulling your GMail address book contacts for this, but I am not positive.
The important take away on this is that HotPot feeds reviews to Google Places. For local businesses, HotPot activity will be key to getting reviews and plenty of them. No longer will Google need to rely on City Search, Yelp, or Google Maps, they now have their own “Four Square” like tool to garner reviews and build up activity on Google Places so they can further monetize local search.
Google Places Tags Do They Work?
So does that little yellow icon that you just bought for $25 for the month that Google will show next to your Google Places aka Google Maps listing work to drive traffic?
Interesting question and here is the statistical data from one client that shows it is not worth the money.
Before the Tag: 14,150 impressions with 1400 actions
After the Tag: 10.351 impressions with 1001 actions
So traffic did not increase nor did actions. Additionally the clicks into the website also decreased.
So why would anyone want to pay $25 for the Tag icon? Well I can think of several times when the Tag may actually help. If you put a discount or special offer in the wording of your Tag, you may have terrific results. In our test case the client did not want to use a promotion and only wanted to highlight his web address.
As Google offers 30 days of the Tag free it may be worth it to your business to test the use of a Tag, but only with a promotional offer. Make sure if you do this that you print the page of your 30 day results in the control panel to use as your benchmark as there is no way to sort data and review old figures if you forget. The control panel will only show the most current 30 day results.
Then make a note on your calendar to review your After figures and compare the two; doing your own statistical test. Make sure you deactivate your tag is you didn’t like your results by clicking the billing tab and then deactivate or you will get billed for the next 30 days of service.
If you find out Tags have worked for you, make sure to leave a comment and your before and after stats to help us all out!
Test Your hReview Tags to See if Google Will Grab Your Reviews for Google Places
I have been an early embracer of the rich snippet technology as when it was released about a year ago I felt that it would be to my and my client’s advantage to have the coding in place. However if you are expecting your hReview rich snippets to be picked up by Google Places or Google Maps from your website, you’d better do what I did and check your code.
Although my code was correct, for pages with more than one review, Google now requires an aggregate rich snippet tag – who knew! This is how I found out. Use this Google tool to add the URL of your page with your rich snippets and hReview tags. Find out if Google will be picking up your rich snippets. You may be like me; having to go back and quickly add an aggregate review tag to the page listing all your reviews as a number and the average rating.
Here’s the link to the tool: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets It is called the Rich Snippet testing tool.
With Google Places adding your own website reviews to your Google Places Page, now’s the time to help Google help you by making sure your code is ready to be picked up by the spider.