Find nearby deals with Google Shopper 1.5 for iPhone

We’ve recently made a few new changes to Google Shopper for iPhone that makes it easy to find nearby deals when you’re on-the-go.
In the latest version of Google Shopper, in addition to the ‘Shop’ tab, you’ll now see two new tabs at the bottom of the app: Offers and My Offers. The Offers tab displays a list, or map view, of nearby offers which businesses have submitted through Google Places - from restaurant and movie theater deals to discounts on tennis lessons or a round of golf.

Let's say you come across an offer for free dessert at a nearby restaurant, but you won't have time to use it until the weekend. You can save the offer for future use, then later view and redeem it from the My Offers tab.

Additionally, if Google Offers are available in your city, you’ll be able to view and redeem your purchased offers on the My Offers tab. Google Offers are currently available in Portland, Oregon, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, with other cities to follow.

Google Shopper 1.5 is currently available for iPhone users in the US and UK with iOS 4.0 and higher. If you’re a current Google Shopper user, you’ll automatically receive an update. Download Google Shopper 1.5 by visiting the App Store. To download Google Shopper for Android, visit Android Market.

Finding great deals is easier with Google Shopper 2.0

Today we’re announcing a new set of features in Google Shopper for Android to make it even easier to research products and find great value deals when you’re on-the-go.

First, we’ve moved features around a bit to help you perform common tasks more quickly. For example, the ‘Starred’ and ‘History’ buttons are now at the top of the page. We’ve also added new tabs to the bottom of the screen for fast navigation to Google Shopper’s newest features.

Verify your business on Google Maps and get an Orkut Badge

Thousands of small businesses owners use Orkut to share information about their products and services, and to communicate with their customers. Now it's even easier to find these businesses using Google Maps from the owner's Orkut profile!

When you visit the Orkut profile of a business owner, you'll find a badge indicating that his listing is already on Google Maps. To visit the listing on the map, just click on the badge:

If you own a business and have an Orkut profile but you haven’t earned the badge yet, simply add your listing to Google Maps. Keep in mind your business doesn't need its own website to be listed on Google! Google Places allows business owners to manage information about their listings if they're already on Google Maps, or to add them to the map if they're not yet listed.

Once they've verified that the basic information about their business is correct and up-to-date, and added details like hours of business and photos, business owners can count on their listings being shown to Google users to grow their customer base. Their listing will appear among search results across Google, including Google Maps, even if they don't have a website. And of course, this is all completely free.

Let's get started! Claim ownership or create your business listing in Google Maps, using the same Google Account you use to access your Orkut profile. Once your business listing is verified on Google Places, your Orkut profile will earn a badge in a few days!

If you need help, visit the Google Places Help Center and watch this tutorial video about Google Places:

Here's to the success of your business!

Introducing new features to Google mobile search

Our thirst for knowledge extends beyond the time we spend in front of our desktop computers. At Google, we are seeing mobile search grow at an exponential rate, increasing five-fold worldwide in just the past two years - a rate comparable to the early days of desktop Google Search. Today on mobile, we can get whatever information we’re looking for anytime, anywhere.

And I'm not just talking about looking up basic information like the weather or a stock quote, which is what people used to do in the early days of mobile search. As mobile devices have become more powerful and connected to faster networks, smartphone users are doing a surprisingly diverse set of search tasks -- from simple lookups, to tasks that involve multiple complex searches.

Hotpot is going Google Places

Last November, we introduced Hotpot, our recommendation engine to help people discover great new places when they search on Google. It’s simple: Rate and review the places you know, add friends whose opinions you trust and we serve you up personalized recommendations based on those tastes.

Since then, we’ve released an iPhone and Android app, integrated Hotpot recommendations intoGoogle.com and Google Maps, expanded to more than 47 languages and enabled people to share their ratings and reviews to Twitter. While busy iterating on the product side, we’ve also launchedmarketing and community campaigns in five cities in the U.S.: Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; Las Vegas, Nev.; Madison, Wis.; and Charlotte, N.C.

It’s been incredibly exciting to watch Hotpot grow—the community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world. Based on this success, we’ve decided to graduate Hotpot to be a permanent part of our core local product offering, Google Places. Rolling Hotpot into Google Places helps simplify the connection between the places that are rated and reviewed and the more than 50 million places that already have an online presence through Google Places—places that millions of people search for and find every day on Google.

Many of you first asked us at Hotpot’s launch: Why the name? Hotpot, the dish, describes a shared eating experience. To us, the name embodied the communal experience of sharing your ratings and reviews with friends, and getting recommendations in return.

Though the name Hotpot may be going away, you can expect even more “Hotpotness” in Google Places. We have big plans to continue adding more features to Google Places that make it even easier to rate, discover and share the places you love whenever you’re using Google. So stay tuned to the new Google Places Blog for product updates, tips, tricks and news from our city campaigns. 

Connecting you with the places you love, Check Google places for Pakistan => google.pk/places