Google Hotpot is a personalized recommendations engine based on what you like and what your friends like. Google has just taken the wraps off Hotpot, an early release of a location-based recommendation engine “powered by you and your friends.” Hotpot takes all of Google Places‘ ratings and reviews features and adds a more personal touch. Currently, Place Pages mostly aggregate review data from sources such as Yelp. With Hotpot, users will be encouraged to rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Users’ ratings and reviews are tracked with a counter at the top of each profile, and likes and dislikes are remembered and used in Google’s recommendation engine. How Does Hotpot Fit In To Google’s Local Offerings? On its own, Hotpot isn’t necessarily that different than what’s available elsewhere (such as on Urban Spoon, Yelp, and Facebook). But as part of a larger social and local combination (the pieces of which Google mostly has already), it could be very compelling. Particularly if Google partnered with someone like Foursquare, Google could vastly improve their personalization by not just what you search for, but by what you actually like. We’ll have to watch and see if they can fulfill on this promise. |
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