hotpot has got to be the most frictionless UI out of all the major review products out there. i think it could have the ability to generate reviews from the kinds of people that Yelp is not able to (like myself).

if google a) promotes the hotbot service in universal/places/maps SERPs, & b) allows business owners to embed their hotbot box on their website, they’d have the potential to generate pretty substantial review volume. then once a google user starts seeing review snippets in the SERPs from people in their google social graph, this has the potential to grow even more and pose a major threat to Yelp.

i agree that creating a separate profile and adding friends is the biggest detriment to the service’s growth. also, personally my google social graph is completely irrelevant for personalized recommendations. if only google & fb could play nice, it could be a killer product

3. Many reviews are left because of an emotion or unusual experience. Many times it is a negative one and they want to bash the company. Without developing the addiction to leaving reviews they could be very skewed. I think that if they can develop an addicted community to play the “hotpotato game” where you don’t want to be the only one in your group left standing without being on top of it you could.

This could also possibly help SMBs with customer loyalty and branding. If they can get them debating or commenting about events that are taking place then tweeting it out, etc… it could be a good thing.

I think the success of HotPot will depend on how well G can get their users hooked and wanting to interact with other fans of the service.

The other thing that could be kind of cool for a user experience but bad for SEOs and people is showing results based on behaviors like when you are traveling. If you are looking for dance clubs and you like house music or bars or Italian restaurants then it could possibly give end users more relevant results personalized to their tastes.

If the search is dance clubs and based on club reviews and your reviews it could pull up clubs that play house music instead of rap based on reviews and where you have commented. For bars, if you constantly review gay bars or bars with dancefloors as opposed to country western bars or dive bars and sports bars where you just drink then it could maybe feed you similar bars when you are in a new city. If you mainly review restaurants that are kid friendly and are traveling it may show you kid friendly restaurants instead to help you find which are great for them. This could also be a bad thing though if you wanted a romantic dinner with your husband/wife and left the kids at home.

This is just a thought which could be bad for SEOs but somewhat good for end users.

Awesome post Lisa! I wonder when the window stickers for SMBs will be coming out lol.

Yep! Local businesses basically need to be in Places or pay the bucks in PPC in order to get noticed in Google. Is Hotpot ratings now going to be required too in order to garnish that top spot? Seems like local biz is being forced into a Google box. It just doesn’t feel right.