Actually, this is big news, but it has not registered yet with most people, even in the Blogosphere.  Here’s what Jamie Birch of Converseon, Inc. wrote today:

"Google to Distribute Discount Coupons

I read that headline this morning and was surprised that no one had blogged about it yet. Maybe I missed the boat but I just saw this this morning on ABCNews.com.

Google is working with Valpak, the company that has been sending coupons to your mail box for years, to supply thier search results with printable coupons. They are also inviting merchants to submit thier coupons directly to them. I’d be very interested to hear what Kurt Lohse has to say about this. Kurt?

I haven’t seen how this is showing up or if it is yet, but wanted to get this out there. If you are relying on Google for your affiliate traffic, I’d say this doesn’t look good and I’d encourage you to broaden your marketing effort. Isn’t this another in a long line of direct assaults on affiliates by our favorite "do no evil" search engine?"

By the way, I’ve done some work with Converseon, Inc. in the past but have not had anything to do with them in the last year or so - I did Search Engine Reputation Management Reports (SERMA) for them a couple of times but they have automated it now (smart thing to do - it was way too much work).

According to ABCNews:

"More than 20,000 coupons are expected to be available Tuesday when the service debuts on Google’s popular mapping service. The initial coupon supply is being provided by Cox Enterprises Inc.’s Valpak Direct Marketing Systems, which has been mailing envelops stuffed with coupons and discount offers for nearly 40 years."

I’m not sure how the discount coupons will show up in Google - a couple of local searches don’t seem to display anything that looks different than a normal search result.