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.
4 Response Comments
I keep seeing that list of Place pages citations continue to grow. Was keeping a chart for slide presentation but it’s gone off the chart. 🙂
There are over 300 sources by my count
never thought about the large directories clogging the SEO, here is a funny joke I saw about the Dalai Lama and Groupon, http://ponderingstuff.com/2011/03/19/dalai-lama-retires-groupon/
I think the notion that Social Media is replacing directories is a sign of the times. Directories are kind of old school and the younger generations prefer to find things through Social Media since that is where they are spending so much time.