I just came across this googleblog item
Crowd Wisdom. Its a google insider project, predictive market system inside the company. Let take an example of predicting product launch dates, as this system is available to all google personnal for betting to predict, its not reflective in terms of developement time, so it might be some strategic date. you bet on something better if there is large amount of relating data which can be accessed to extract information. I guess this data is readily available from billions of google searches.
can google steal"Now one of the things we're thinking about is what to do with it."- Help Dominos sell pizza.
Profile all the searches with the words relating to pizza for a particular area or zipcode. Lets say this number is 1000, now dominos can use this number and compare with the number of actual sales on that zipcode say its 100. so you know, you might have missed 900 people in that particular zipcode area. Do this for all the locations and offer crazy deals where you are losing the most customer and get them the taste of spicy chicken wings to keep them hooked on.
How effective can the above approach be? Locals have set preferences, like I just want dominos but if I move to a new area and want to get pizza- obviously I google for pizza and find most of the major pizza places within 4-5 miles but see this crazy deal from dominos so even if my fav was papa jones I might want to go for dominos this once. After this its all very simple- dominos number gets into my cell phone, if its a pickup I will know the driving directions etc etc This establishes the association of person to the place and probability of more bussiness is for sure increased.