14 DAY TRIAL // Local businesses are the hot market right now for online services. Most big businesses have a pretty solid online presence at this point and the competition is pretty fierce in this area. Local businesses by contrast don't really have the resources to establish a very well though-out web identity and, so far, there hasn't been a real need for most of them. Big web companies, Google is no exception, have realized that this largely untapped market has a lot of potential, so many are pushing hard to win small businesses over. Google has now made a pretty big move sending out stickers to 100,000 businesses in the US, labeling them as “Favorite Places.”
That in itself isn't exactly an innovative move, but the interesting part is that these stickers feature two-dimensional bar codes, known as QR codes, which can be decoded by phones or devices with QR code readers and store some sort of information usually used in commercial applications. In this particular case, the QR code links to a the “Favorite Places” page for the particular store, restaurant or whatever business may be sporting it.
The page has some general information about the business, a map, working hours, phone numbers but also reviews and other third-party of user-generated information. The idea is that users standing outside the store will be able to retrieve a bunch of useful information and could also potentially be used as promotional tool, for example with discounts for users who found the place through Google.
These QR codes are common place in Japan and most mobile phones there can read them. But Google has a bit of an uphill struggle trying to get them into the mainstream in the US as well. It's no use to have 100,000 businesses using them if no one knows what they are or how to use them so Google is also giving out 40,000 copies of the Quickmark QR Code Reader app for the iPhone which usually sells for $1.99. There are a bunch of other, free apps for the iPhone though and for Android devices as well.
The businesses which have been sent the stickers are selected from Google's local business directory, which counts more than 1 million companies at this point and growing at a huge pace. They are also the most popular as determined by their Place Rank, a metric similar to Page Rank used to determine a place's importance based on several factors like online references, how many people look for it and others.