Groupon, the coupon and discount aggregator, has added a listing function to its site, called “Pages”. The aggregator currently receives most of its traffic from emails promoting their deals. By adding listings for small businesses, Groupon hopes to appear in search results when users search directly for businesses, in a similar way that Yelp profiles appear in SERPs along with the business’s website and social profiles.
Also similar to Yelp, Groupon is adding a review function. Users will have the chance to write reviews for business Pages. Along with reviews, business owners can potentially benefit by the “request a deal” feature. The new feature allows users to send a request straight to the owner of the business profile seeking coupons and promotions. Business owners can use this information to create promotions to capture these leads.
For SEOs, Groupon Pages will be another listing site to boost local rankings. Groupon itself will benefit from the inbound links as well, improving the rankings of the listings, in an (ideally) symbiotic relationship between business and Groupon. Time will tell if Groupon Pages will result in the amount of user engagement that Yelp currently sees. Regardless, local SEOs would benefit from using it as another aggregator for business information and NAP. Interested in claiming your Groupon Page? Create your profile on Groupon Works.