Have you heard of Project Beacon? It’s one of the latest concepts from Google.

At any given point in the day, we are all on our smartphones and at some point, we will search for a location we are going to, look at reviews, get directions, find more information on our current location, all with the help of our phones. Safe to say, phones are now an essential part of our everyday life as Google well knows.

The savvy minds at Google have honed in on this and have crafted a nifty little device that makes location-based searching and interaction a little easier and a lot more accurate, Project Beacon.

What Does the Beacon Device Do?

It is a device that is installed in your physical business location that gives your store, office, restaurant more potential to be visible on Google when a user is nearby. These beacons ping out a signal to nearby mobile users that have location services on. When they are in the vicinity of your beacon and search for certain things that are related to your business, the chances of you appearing in the results is increased if they are near you.

Note: It does not store customer information, it only sends out a location based signal.

For example – if Joe was to search for “Thai restaurants near me” and was within the range of your beacon, the chances of your Thai restaurant showing up in the search results may be a lot higher than before.

Additionally…

Google mentions that it will allow businesses to make better use of the location-based features currently available on Google. These include:

• Higher visibility on Google maps – only when people opt-in for location history
• Allowing user-generated content (like photos and reviews) to be gathered from visitors to your location
• Increase the accuracy of ‘popular times’ and visit duration to your location
• Help provide more accurate insights on how people interact with your business

There are some great features packed into the beacon device. We really think this beacon is useful for both the business location and its customers, especially now the mobile usage is at an all-time high. Currently it is limited production, but expect very soon for it to be eligible for all businesses.