Coupons For Local Businesses

New York Times reports that Google will start allowing local businesses to add coupons in Google Maps for free. They hope to attract many small businesses interested in promoting their products to a targeted audience and a lot of freebie hunters, that will visit Google Maps more.

It's easy to create coupons, users will be able to see them in a couple of hours and print them. If other companies charge businesses for the coupons, Google has decided to make them free. "The big picture here is that to make local search really work you need massive participation by really relevant local businesses. It's hard enough getting small businesses online. It doesn't make sense to put up a lot of roadblocks," says Google's Shailesh Rao, director for local search.

The coupons will be visible starting from today in Google Maps' business listings. Here's one example.

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