Review Restaurants & Businesses From Your Phone

You decide to eat at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant but come to find out that the inside looks glamorous, the food is amazing, the service is extroardinary and the price is affordable. You want to share your find with your friends, family and the rest of the world. So, what do you do?

This exact thing happened to Josh Siegel, a product manager for Google’s Mobile team, who explained how easy it is to rate and review businesses like the Vietnamese restaurant he enjoyed so much.

1. Visit google.com from your phone
2. Search for the business by name and location like “pot pho sf ca”
3. Click on the business name on the results page to view details
4. Scroll down and click on “Sign in to write/edit your review”

And there you have it… 4 easy steps to business reviews via Google Mobile. BUT Android has the potential to bring even MORE to the table:

Open your phone up and click on the Google Biz Review icon on your phone’s desktop. Based on your GPS location, it automatically assumer you’re in “pot pho” in “San Francisco” and since you’re using your own mobile phone, logs you into your account. Just rate, review and click submit and you’re all done!

This is perfectly possible with an iPhone App as well, assuming Google and/or another service make it possible. But the reason Android and other phones that can/will offer 3rd party applications make this even BETTER is because of the social aspect. For example, perhaps people in your phone book have already been to this restaurant/biz… how have they rated/ranked it? The answer is one haptic feedback touch away.

Most people wouldn’t go through the effort to review the restaurant where they are for several reasons:

1. Their phone now doesn’t do it
2. It would cost extra to access the internet
3. It takes too long to go through the various screen
4. It takes too long (had to emphasize that again)
5. People don’t know it exists

But as these barriers are brought down one by one, with help from Android among others, these types of mobile interactions won’t become the exception, but the norm.

Pretty soon the big question will become how can Google keep these ratings/reviews relevant? We’ve seen people “game” the system to help themselves and hurt competitors across the entire web. Could Google’s recent interest in DIGG have something to do with foreseeing this problem?

Perhaps, but perhaps more interesting here is the potential reach of Google with business reviews. Will local websites start interfacing with Google to provide localized business reviews? How will companies like Zagat compete with Google’s consumer based rating system – obviously the expert opinion matters but will the “if you can’t beat em, join em” mentality take over?

Opening up mobile to 3rd party development is a HUGE step that opens up an unimaginable amount of doors. But Google might have to step on a few toes along the way… and it seems as if everybody is finding that out early on.

Hmmm… maybe they can use Google Mobile to find the best local Podiatrist.