Posted on June 11, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Google announces location-based search tagging and post coupon feature. Will Google Latitude be the most important LBS?

Location-based apps and the geo space continues to be popular topic and business parter with various location-based startups and if you think Google is just going to sit on the sidelines you’re wrong. Recently it was reported that Google Latitude has over 3 million users and Google released Places a site for businesses to update their Google location profile page and add coupons or post. Today on Google’s Lat Long Blog Google announced Google Tags and post for business.

Google Tags is a $25 a month custom message for business that show in Google Maps and search results. More explained from the Lat Long Blog.

For a flat monthly fee of $25, businesses can enhance their listings that appear on Google.com and Google Maps with a yellow tag that emphasizes specific information such as a coupon, video, website, menu, reservations, photos, or a custom message. Tags do not affect the ranking of the listings, and we clearly indicate which parts of the search result are sponsored.

If you try out a query for “massage houston,” you’ll see that two of the businesses whose listings appear have created coupon Tags to promote their current offers:

Google also announced a feature called “post” for business to update their place page:

Posts, a new kind of Tag that enables business owners to create a custom message, is also live. These messages can be changed as often as the business owner would like, making it easy to let the world know about a special discount or limited-time offer.

With the addition of Google Tags/Post Google adds the ability for businesses to have sponsored listing and manage their own coupons for the Google Place listing. Hat tip to the “Understanding Google Maps & Local Search” blog for the post who also made a good point about Google Tags:

At a flat rate of $25/mo per business, Google Maps will have a simple to use paid product in place. Google has noted that 2 million businesses have claimed their listings. If there is even only a 10% adoption rate, it will mean income of $60 million/year for Google.

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What are your thoughts on Google Tags?

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