Last week, Google besmirched their famously uncluttered home page with a daily deal type advert, similar to Groupon, who offer discounted goods and services. In what seems to be an attempt at challenging Groupon, Google displayed an advert which was linked to Google Offers, a service which is only available in the United States. The offer was for heavily discounted tickets to the Museum of Natural History.
Approximately eight months ago, Google offered $6 billion in a takeover bid for the company, which was refused by Groupon. However, Groupon has now launched a bid for flotation which could be imminent. Google takes pride in the uncluttered appearance of its homepage, only using it for promotion of services which it deems to be strategically necessary, like Chrome browser.
There are more than 115 million subscribers to Groupon whose success has encouraged between 600 to 700 companies to try and mimic their triumph. The closest rival to Groupon is livingsocial.com. As the global economy struggles through hard times, companies offering discounted services and vouchers are becoming increasingly popular.
The adverts that are shown alongside the Google search results generate around 96 percent of revenue worth $29 billion for Google. According to a spokeswoman for Google:
“We occasionally include a link on the Google homepage that points users to important information, whether it be about a relevant cause, a new product or an offer. Users can benefit from learning about great deals from local organisations.”
As Google continues to dominate the search engines and attempts to dominate other services, whether in Chester or elsewhere, it remains an important feature of a relevant search engine optimisation strategy.
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It was surely only a matter of time before Google tried to follow in the footsteps of Groupon, KGB and also Facebook (to a lesser extent.) It will be interesting to see if Google is able to make any money out of this business model, as all of the other competitors just seem to be spending a lot of money to try and gain market share, with very little to show for it yet.