Groupon Reviews As Google Places Citations = More IYP SEO Woe

Reviews of businesses on Groupon have been spotted on Google Place Pages since January:

Last year I speculated that social local applications like Twitter & Foursquare could start to cause a lot of SEO problems for IYPs because they could easily replicate the IYP structure while providing a lot more unique content. Groupon reviews are yet another data source that will siphon search traffic away from traditional local directories.

An IYP-like directory of businesses in every city that are running group-buying deals would be pretty powerful.

Thanks to Bonnie Wang of Demandforce for the tip.