We're still super excited over our "Favorite Places" window decal from Google, and we wanted to find out more about this awesome surprise.
According to the Official Google Blog, the company sent 100,000 decals to local business in the United States. They chose the businesses that were the most sought out and researched on Google and Google Maps. These "Favorite Places" are located in over 9000 towns and in all 50 states.
Another FAQ section that Google provided states that the selected businesses represent less than 1% of the 28 million businesses in the country. Exciting!
The reason behind it? It's part of an overall effort to help provide people with the best local business results when trying to figure out where to go. They also plan to send out new waves of window decals to qualifying businesses. Apparently we were in the first round!
You can see a sample of Favorite Places in 20 of the largest U.S. cities here.
We haven't hung the decal in the window yet, because we're still trying to find a good spot that's visible, but not so accessible that someone would steal it. And, I'm still trying to figure out how to scan the QR code- I downloaded the QuickMark app that the article recommended, but I haven't had any luck getting the scan to work. Supposedly, once a clear scan is picked up, the app will bring up a page that has business info, hours, and reviews.
Google has a fun (and kind of cheesy) little video that shows how all this works.
