September 21st, 2011Comments (0)

Global Going Local: Google Acquisitions by Jen Tatro

I frequently visit daily deal websites and online recommendation sites on a regular basis. Between Yelp, OpenTable and Groupon, I see a lot of value in connecting with local businesses online and discovering new restaurants. Clearly, Google has been seeing the value too.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google purchased DailyDeal, a website based in Germany similar to the likes of Living Social and Groupon—which complements its Google Offers website. Google Offers launched in June and is currently only available in select cities, but the DailyDeal acquisition is just the latest in a series of moves focusing on local commerce websites.

Earlier this month, Google announced the acquisition of Zagat. At first, this move seemed surprising, but in reading more about the announcement, it’s clear that more brands and companies are seeing the value in marketing and branding on a local level. Hyper-local marketing is influencing the way companies engage consumers—not just for small to mid sized businesses, but for global organizations as well. Zagat has specialized in local reviews and recommendations for years, and it’s an approach for Google to tap into a regional consumer base and connect with local businesses.

In recent months, a few daily deal sites have reshuffled. Facebook cancelled the Facebook Deals product, while Yelp has downsized its daily coupon offering. Still, local commerce sites continue to grow as a source of recommendations and community buzz. Last week, I caught an infographic from Yelp, showing its exponential growth over the last five years. The ‎site experienced 54 percent traffic growth in the past year— this explosion of online activity and memberships signal how more consumers are looking for recommendations from people like them in the local community.

There has been a lot of speculation around how Google will leverage local commerce acquisitions like DailyDeal and Zagat to tap into the cities around the world. Aggregating recommendations, daily couponing, reservations, and sharing the information with your extended network on Google+ could all be rolled into a powerful Android application. And of course, any Google searches for dining destinations will find Zagat recommendations at the top of the list.

In any case, it’s pretty exciting to see how the local commerce sites and even global companies are evolving their business models to reach a consumer audience craving reviews, recommendations and deals. Clearly, this audience is hungry for information on a local level, and it was only a matter of time before Google jumped into the local commerce playing field.

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