Groupon Now Creates Pages For Businesses, Whether The Business Wants It Or Not

If at first Groupon doesn’t succeed…

Re/Code is reporting that Groupon is attempting yet another way to reach the public. Groupon is now offering a service called Pages, loosely based on Yelp. In this case, Groupon creates a page for individual businesses which then allows the business to offer deals and customers to leave feedback and to check on deals. Groupon has done this voluntarily.

Groupon says it has already created millions of listings which essentially look like Yelp meets Google+ Local meets YP.com. Pages contain basic information like addresses and phone numbers. But the goal is to convince a business to claim its page and then update it with more information including, hopefully, a Groupon deal. In turn, the hope is Groupon customers will leave reviews and tips on a company’s page, which surely will get the business’ attention.

“[W]e’re dramatically increasing the number of merchants on Groupon and providing our customers with yet another reason to always check Groupon first,” CEO Eric Lefkofsky said in a canned statement.

This has been a very slow process, with little to show publicly for the efforts thus far. Groupon has repeatedly lowered guidance in its last few quarterly reports and its stock price has been cut in half since the start of the year, as the transition lags. The company reports third-quarter financial results next Thursday.

TechCrunch is reporting that Pages is an online directory that will give businesses their own home page on Groupon’s site, where offers, news, user reviews and other information will live — and lets Groupon compete against Yelp, Foursquare, Google, Facebook and the dozens of others that aggregate local listings and provide individual pages for each business in the process.

Groupon says that while it has quietly been building up the service, it has already created 7 million pages. Now, with the service officially going live, Pages is opening up to all U.S. businesses.

“Pages brings millions of additional businesses to the Groupon marketplace and connects them with our large community of mobile users looking for things to do, see or buy,” said Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon CEO, in a statement. “We’re giving these merchants their own space on Groupon and new tools to highlight their business and bring new customers through their doors.”

What’s also interesting about Pages is that it’s a twist in how Groupon is tapping into its own big data storehouse.

The company has for years been collecting ratings from its users of the businesses and services that come in through Groupon deals. It has tens millions of these — 23 million to be exact — on file. These have mainly been used for internal purposes and also shared with the businesses so that they can get feedback. Now Groupon says that it will repurpose some of these in the new pages.

[Image courtesy of Wall Street Cheat Sheet]