> BlogGoogle Hotpot is the search giants latest recommendations based engine, powered by Google Places. Hotpot uses Places data to deliver results based on reviews made by you and your friends. This personalisation works best the more you rate and review places, and the more friends you add to your account who also actively rate and review places.
Hotpot lets you share what you think about a particular place, or if searching for something, delivers you customised search results based on what you have shown an interest in already (by your previous ratings), and what your friends think (recommendations). To get started you need to first sign into your Google Account (or create a new one if you don’t have one already), and then follow the setup directions here http://www.google.com/hotpot/ to create your Hotpot account.
To rate a place, you simply hover over rating stars anywhere you see them. If using your computer, you can find these stars in Hotpot, Google Maps search results and on Places Pages. From your mobile phone device, you can rate places on the go. Mobile rating stars can be found in several areas on your phone including: Google Maps mobile app for Android, Places Android app, Android home screen rating widget and Mobile Place pages. Note again you must be logged into your Google Account to star or rate a business.
If you login to your Hotpot account, you can start searching, just like you would do if you launched Google in your browser. For example, you may decide to start by rating and reviewing restaurants in Auckland that you like. As you can see in the screenshot below, you have the option to give a star rating for a particular restaurant that you like (or dislike) – the star rating scale is between 1 and 6, they appear grey in colour but as you hover over them they will turn gold in colour.
You will also see an average star rating for each business too, if there is a blue number at the end of this average star rating this will indicate the number of reviews on their Places Page. If you click on this number, that businesses Places Page will open in new window where you can read the reviews and/or add your own. The French Cafe for instance, has an average star rating of 4 and a half, and 189 reviews.
Another feature that is still in beta mode includes seeing a stream of current listings from your Hotpot friends when using Google Maps on your computer. Also, many users are seeing a link to ‘Rate now on Hotpot to share your recommendations’ when searching on Google Maps and when viewing Places Pages. As with most products released by Google, if you no longer want the rating or review you gave a particular business to influence your search results, you have the option to delete or edit. Likewise, you may decide to tweak a review you gave a business for poor customer service if you were subsequently happy with how they dealt with the matter.
If you are a website owner and/or have a Places Page for your business, Google Hotpot could potentially impact your position in Google’s organic search results, depending on users’ uptake of Hotpot of course. As you most likely have seen, Google Place listings are now integrated with organic listings into search results (previously they displayed as a cluster of results at the top of the page), therefore taking up valuable real estate on the first page of Google SERPs. Additionally, reviews and ratings on Google Places pages are an important factor taken into consideration by Google when determining the order of Places pages in the organic search results.
Try out Google Hotpot for yourself and tell your friends - everyone’s input will help towards targeted personalised searching.
For website owners, the more favourable ratings you can get about your business via Google Hotpot and other social networking tools the better. If looking to further your websites brand awareness and visibility, make sure you invest in a social media marketing campaign today.
Update: 13 April 2011
While the functionality of Hotpot has not changed, Google announced recently that the Google Hotpot brand has been scraped and is now being integrated into Google Places – its local product offering. Following the successful uptake of Hotpot, Google has made the move to make it a permanent feature of Google Places.
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