Google's equivalent of a local directory service, Google Maps, is now giving away coupons for local businesses.

Google will allow businesses to upload coupon information, including images, and will then display a link to those coupons when the business's name is displayed in response to queries by users, who can then print the coupons, reports the New York Times. Google has also agreed to distribute ValPak coupons, with no money exchanged between the two companies. Google is not charging merchants, either, similar to Google Base, which carries free classified ads, among other content.

However, businesses will be able to buy Google ads - sponsored links - to drive traffic to their coupons, just as they do for Google Base content. Google said the coupon effort is a means of getting local businesses online without having to create websites. "The big picture here is that to make local search really work you need massive participation by really relevant local businesses," Shailesh Rao, Google's director of local search, is quoted by the Times as saying.

Valpak, a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises and one of the top U.S. providers of direct-mail advertising services, will benefit from free exposure to Google's vast audience, while Google will receive content to offer to Google Maps users, writes the Mercury News.

"We've been in the coupon business for 38 years now, and we've learned an awful lot over those years about what an effective coupon is," Todd Leiser, vice-president for Valpak.com, is quoted by the Mercury News as saying. "It's not out of the realm of possibility to think that we could resell Google AdWords too in the future."

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