Google Places with Hotpot blog

Now available: Google Places with Hotpot for iPhone

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 | 8:09 AM

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We recently released Google Places with Hotpot in Google Maps for Android, and starting now, you can have that same great experience as an iPhone app. We realize the importance of finding places you’ll love while you’re out and about, no matter what mobile device you use. And Places with Hotpot not only helps you find places near where you are, it gives you the best places to go for you by personalizing your search results.

In case you aren’t familiar with Google Places, it lets you quickly search for places nearby and personalizes the results based on places you’ve rated. We get you started with a few popular search categories, but you can also tailor the list by adding your own favorite searches. This makes it fast and easy to find the best places for you with little fuss.


Use a default search category, save your own, or rate the nearest place quickly.

It can be pretty rewarding to discover a new place you love, but we also realize that there are some experiences you just can’t wait to share. So Places makes it super simple to rate a place with your iPhone while you’re there. Just fire up the app and hit “Rate now.” It will use your location to guess your current place and let you post a Hotpot review right from your phone. But it’s not just about getting to say what you think—the more you rate places, the more you’re sharing about your tastes and the more we can give you personally tailored recommendations.


Give your star rating and add optional details or a review so Hotpot knows your taste.

If you want to make things even tastier, just visit google.com/hotpot from your desktop computer. Here you can add friends to the mix and quickly rate all the places you already know. Once you’ve added friends, you’ll find your results seasoned not just with reviews from around the web and recommendations based on your own personal taste, but also with your friends’ opinions too.


Once you start rating and add friends, Places can give you personalized recommendations.

Get the Places app on your iPhone now by searching for Google Places in the App Store or going here.

This first version of Places is available for all iOS devices in English only. However, expect more features and improvements to roll out soon, including localization in many new languages. We’re hard at work to make Places with Hotpot more and more delicious.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting... wonder what adoption rates will be?

Kristin Appenbrink said...

So excited for this! I love hotpot, but kept forgetting to rate places once I got back to my home computer. This will make it soooo much easier.

Anonymous said...

I think Google needs to look at validating Hotpot reviews - it is too open to abuse, worse than TripAdvisor even. Anybody can post what they want, true or not.

Vanessa Schneider said...

visitnormandy --

We hear you, and have a team dedicated to fighting abuse and keeping reviews quality.

- Vanessa, Hotpot community manager

Unknown said...

Downloaded to my wi-fi connected iPad, but it insists that I am still in Phoenix, Arizona ( where I was last week ) and not Brainerd, Minnesota ( where I am at present ). Hmmm, any ideas.

Dr. Roland Kehr

Vanessa Schneider said...

Hey Roland -- Thanks for reporting this. It's something we're looking into. For now, you can specify locations at the top in the search bar, i.e. "italian restaurant, new york, ny".

Unknown said...

Hooray! Expecting the # of reviews to start exploding.

Wayne Stewart said...

A good start, consider adding a preference for kilometres.

Unknown said...

I would like to use Hotpot, but the inability to create paragraphs limits its usefulness for me.