Feb 23, 2011As part of an effort to attract more local searches from consumers using its search engine, Google has been testing an RFID-enabled service aiming to link local businesses with customers. The service, known as Hotpot debuted in November. Since then, the company has launched a pair of pilot projects—the first one in Portland, Ore., the second in Austin, Texas—that include Near Field Communication (NFC) RFID technology as a tool to connect consumers with businesses.
Hotpot is an adjunct to Google's Place Pages—a service Google that launched in September 2009 and that features Web pages that the search engine's users can access to find information about a business' hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, as well as customer ratings and reviews. The Web link for a company's Place Page appears whenever the company's name turns in the a Google search results page. Google creates the initial Place Page that appears for every company, but each individual business owner is free to edit and update the information that appears on his or her company's Place Page. For example, the Place Page service allows the business to verify Google search and maps information, and lets it to respond to reviews. If a store wishes to add marketing promotions, such as a coupon or special offer, it can do so at no charge. For a fee to Google, companies can also advertise via Google Tags, a program that enables businesses to highlight the important features of their business with a small yellow tag, and Google Boost—an advertising service.
In November, Google launched Hotpot, which—in an instructional YouTube video—Matt Balez, one of the company's product managers, describes as a "local recommendation engine for Google Places, powered by you and your friends. You tell us the places you like—restaurants, cafes, book shops—and we'll recommend new places to you the next time you search."
The Hotpot program is part of an effort to bring Google to the smaller businesses in local areas, helping them address their potential customers through Google marketing programs that have a local focus. To deliver Place Pages information to consumers on the sidewalk, as they are making decisions about whether to enter a particular store, Google is experimenting with NFC RFID technology, which involves short-range passive 13.56 MHz RFID tags.
The RFID-enabled system features an NFC tag embedded in a sticker that attaches to the front of a store and is encoded with ID number that instructs an NFC-enabled phone to display the appropriate Place Page for that business. Google, says Jeff Aguero, a product marketing manager for Hotpot, foresees that as more consumers have NFC-enabled phones that can talk to the tags, users will increasingly be able to tap such a phone against a tag on a business' door or window, and thereby access information about that establishment before determining whether to enter or, in the case of a restaurant, make dinner reservations. Users can then also share their own recommendations with friends and family and add ratings or reviews to the business' Place Page, prompting the search engine to tailor its future results for that user, based on his or her ratings.
The RFID-enabled initiative began in Portland in December 2010, with about 250 businesses using the tags. Google also made an effort to bolster the personal approach, with members of its staff attending a Portland Trail Blazers basketball game to hand out T-shirts with Google and Trail Blazers logos.
Consumers who do not own an NFC-enabled phone—which is currently the large majority of the population—can access that same data via the free Google Mobile app, which can be installed on a variety of Internet-enabled handsets, as well as Apple's iPad. Using the Google Mobile app, however, may require clicking on several prompts, while the NFC option would need simply a tap against the sticker, says Aguero. "We see NFC as such an interesting and up-and-coming technology," he explains. "It's a really easy way for consumers to access information." In the meantime, consumers could also use the Google Mobile app to access a company's Place Page by keying in the ID number printed on its Google sticker.
By mid-February Google had sent nearly 10,000 Hotpot kits to businesses in Portland, although Aguero says his company does not know how many of those stickers have been attached to the fronts of stores. He says the city program has resulted in NFC "clicks" on tags, but decline to indicate the number of those events. "We're very happy with where Portland is with the program," Aguero comments.
Based on the interest generated by the Portland Hotpot program, Google took the technology to Texas this month. In Austin, where the system was launched on Feb. 11, thousands of businesses are expected to attach Google NFC-enabled stickers to their doorways and windows.
Both Austin and Portland, Aguero says, are "tech-savvy, forward-looking cities" with a dense population of businesses in the city centers. "They have a good demographic for starting new, innovative things—an embracing attitude."
One of the city's residents who agrees with that assessment is Rebecca Martin, senior VP of marketing for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. "We were really happy to get the call from Google," says Martin, who notes that social networking is playing an increasing role in the marketing of small businesses. "We are a tech-savvy hub for developments such as these," she says. "This [the RFID-enabled Hotpot service] is one of those new trends we think will benefit our small-businesses space." She adds that the chamber of commerce has been receiving calls from companies interested in learning more about the program, in the days following its announcement in a Google blog.
Google intends to continue offering the RFID-enabled Hotpot kits to targeted business districts throughout the United States, Aguero says, although the company has made no decision yet as to where those deployments would take place in the near future.
