Google Offers is Live

maps.google.com

22 points·twapi··10 comments

This is not Google Offers. It's simply a Google Tag advertisement.

And what exactly is the difference? Both are local deals.

Tags are flat-fee sponsored links embedded into search results (and maps results). They can be coupons, photos, or even youtube videos.

"Offers", as I understand it, will be location-based deal-per-day ads.

So tags are more flexible. Offers sounds like a subset of tags.

The offer I get for Chicago is "Save with our Internet Only rates Low Rates Guaranteed! Visit our website to Book Now! www.bestwestern.com."

Google appears to think that Groupon is AdWords ads with worse formatting. I think they just might be slightly more complicated than that. For starters, I hear they typically involve prepaying in return for a large discount.

I thought Groupon doesn't pay businesses until a few days after they've sold the deal to customers.

Has a long way to go. One of Groupon's biggest selling points is its 1000's of writers and their witty descriptions.

Is this really their groupon replacement? I'm actually asking if their local business feature had the option to do coupons before.

One Philadelphia Offer:

>>First Unitarian Church,Philadelphia 100% Dogma Free 100% Guilt Free 100% Damnation Free

Either the hype/prediction machine totally missed what Google Offers is or I'm totally baffled as to how Google Offers, in its current state, will compete with Groupon.

Rising quantity of these coupon plus discount middleman means good times for consumers. I can already see coupon comparison meta-search engines popping up in near future.

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