Google Hotpot now on Google.com and around the world

[Cross-posted from the Hotpot Community Blog]

Back in November, we introduced Hotpot, a new local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends. Using Hotpot is simple: you rate places on google.com/hotpot—restaurants, hotels, cafes—and add friends on Hotpot whose opinions you trust. Then the next time you perform a search, Google will serve up personalized results, listing places based on your tastes, as well as recommendations from your friends.



We’ve watched Hotpot grow and change over the last couple months, and today Hotpot is really going places: to a Google search box near you and around the world.

You can now enjoy Hotpot recommendations in your regular search results on Google.com. So say you’re looking for a restaurant in Barcelona. Go to Google and search [restaurant barcelona]. If a friend has rated a particular restaurant, you might see their rating and what they had to say about it—as well as their name and photo—directly beneath that restaurant’s listing. To see all recommendations by your friends, click “Places” on the lefthand side of the page, and choose “Friends only.” Remember, you’ll need to be logged in to your Google account in order to see recommendations.

Seeing place recommendations based on your tastes and those of your friends across more Google searches will make results more relevant to you and maybe lead you to discover a new gem. If you don’t have Hotpot friends yet, you can invite them to share all the places they love with you by using the “Friends” tab on google.com/hotpot.

But Hotpot will only be half the fun if you can’t share it with all your international friends. So starting today, we’re making Hotpot available in 38 new languages—including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish—allowing people to share their favorite places in their native language.

Start rating and sharing recommendations with Hotpot everywhere, anytime: at google.com/hotpot, on Google Maps, using Google Maps for Android with an easy widget, and on our new iPhone app.

Happy rating!

Posted by Lior Ron, Product Manager

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Write A Home Party Business Job Description

Successful Home Party Plan Recruiting Starts With Job Description
When you are a party plan business consultant, a great deal of your income doesn't depend solely on your own direct sales, but upon your ability to successfully recruit talented, motivated direct sales consultants that work under you. This is just one reason why there are no limits to the potential you have to earn as a home based business professional. However, because you will rely so heavily on the success of your other sales consultants, it's up to you to set your sights on recruiting the best sales talent. All companies in the corporate world have written a job description before they seek the ideal canditate. This step is often overlooked by leaders in a party plan business. Before you can recruit the best talent, though, the first step is to have a clear understanding of what it is you expect your new recruits to accomplish as home party planning consultants. This is why it's essential to start the recruitment process with an in-depth description of the skills, talents and experience you wish your entrepreneurial staff to bring to the table so that you have a clear and definitive way to determine if a potential recruit measures up to your specific needs and expectations.

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Work-at-Home: Boston Market Hiring B2B Catering Sales Reps

Boston Market is seeking work-at-home inside sales reps to increase catering sales throughout an assigned territory.  You will be responsible for all business-to-business sales for 20 to 30 restaurants. You must have sales experience, as well as a proven sales track record.  You also must be proficient with CRM software and have experience utilizing Microsoft Word, Excel, and the Internet. 

These are full-time positions.  If interested in learning more about this telecommute position and applying, please visit the job page at Careerbuilder.  Good luck!

Other Posts of Interest:
Work-at-Home: Tips on Getting Started in Transcription

Work-at-Home as a Cloud 10 Agent

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Tips and tricks for Financial Services advertisers

We’ve asked our AdWords Team Managers to provide tips and tricks for online advertising within particular industries. Over the next few weeks, we’ll feature these guest posts on the Small Business Blog. We're kicking off with a guest post on advertising within the Financial Services industry -- check back for information on your industry!

In thinking about ‘online advertising’ it’s easy to focus on keywords, ad texts, and clickthrough rates. Now with more online media channels than ever, it’s important we think about our online identity holistically as well -- and that we consider how this identity might impact our advertising both on and offline.

This practice is particularly important for advertisers in the Financial Services industry. Our businesses and customers are greatly impacted by economic trends and world events. For this reason, I encourage you to consider the following tips when developing your advertising strategies.

• Be an industry expert. As a member of the Financial Services industry, you must be an expert on the economy as a whole -- not just an expert of your own particular niche. One thing we’ve learned from the recession is just how interconnected the Financial Services industry is: decisions and regulations in one sector often impact dealings in another. For example, as interest rates were lowered through the recession, consumer interest in refinancing increased at a sustained level. As a marketer, you must stay on top of these trends to understand how they impact your business and your customers.

• Adjust your online advertising strategy in reaction to consumer behavior or industry trends. If you notice a particularly pertinent financial ruling or piece of news, use Insights for Search to learn how this change has impacted search behavior. For example, as Congress considered extending the Bush Tax Cuts recently, consumer searches spiked. What an excellent opportunity to get your name in front of your target audience in order to get the most out of your marketing budget!

• As an example, Humana insurance recently noticed changing consumer behavior and incorporated industry trends into their marketing strategy. In reaction to changing healthcare reform and later medicare enrollment, Humana took the opportunity to educate their customers via a YouTube brand channel and edited their ad text to include pertinent terms, such as ‘affordable.’

• Manage your online brand and reputation. For better or for worse, there are now countless channels through which you can influence your brand online. I recommend setting up Google News Alerts that trigger when your company name is mentioned. I also recommend creating Profile Pages, listing your business on Google Places (only, of course, if you have a brick and mortar address), and testing new Google ad formats that showcase your product or service, such as SiteLinks.

• Engage with your customers online. And finally, to build upon your online brand, it’s important to interact with your customers online. Engaging with your customers online can also help you better understand if/how economic trends are impacting them -- and this can help you make business and advertising decisions. I recommend creating Twitter, Facebook and YouTube identities to solicit feedback and engage with your customers!

2011 is an exciting year to be an online advertiser! In planning your advertising strategy this year, make sure you take a step back to see the bigger picture. For more tips on Google’s tools related to online business, please visit the Small Business Center.

Posted by Payton Dobbs, Team Manager, AdWords Financial Services

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Checks Online - Why Would You Care To Order Online?

With so many different ways to order checks today, one might wonder what might be the advantages of ordering online. If you too are thinking about ordering checks or ordering checks online, you have come to the right place. Once you are familiar with all the advantages that this option has to offer, it is very unlikely that you would want to go in for any other option. You will quickly conclude that the internet is in fact the best place to go to when you need to place an online order.

Huge selection

The first point would probably have to be the massive selection that is available on the internet. With so much to choose, it is highly unlikely that you are not going to find what you need. You should be able to quite easily select the right pattern and be able to customize it pretty much exactly to what you would like. This, in a number of ways, is the way to go if you want your checks to look completely unique and distinct. Many people do a lot of things to customize their appearance, but simply getting the right check can do wonders.

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