Appetas, a two-man firm focused on building better mobile websites for restaurants, has become a bite-sized morsel for Google.
The Seattle-based startup disclosed its acquisition by Google on its website Tuesday. Terms weren’t disclosed.
Though undoubtedly a small deal for the Internet giant, Appetas fits Google’s ambitions for improving the quality of websites and making it easier to search for local businesses. Both can help generate more revenue from search advertising.
The Appetas team adds a distinct mobile flavor to such efforts.
The company provided website design and hosting services to help restaurants simplify the process of maintaining a mobile website. It was started when one of the founders was frustrated that restaurant websites didn’t work well on smartphones.
But the next phase for Appetas leaders Keller Smith and Curtis Fonger may not be limited to restaurants, they hinted in their blog post about joining Google. “We now have an opportunity to help merchants on an even bigger scale,” they wrote.
Poorly designed websites are problematic for Google, which benefits if users find useful content at the other end of links on its search pages. Frustrating results may encourage them to turn to competing offerings like Yelp, whose site provides a more consistent experience in one place.
Restaurant websites are among the most important because they are the most popular local search across smartphones and desktop computers, according to first quarter data provided by YP.
Google has a number of initiatives to help local businesses provide it with better content. Google Places for Business encourages local merchants to submit information for Google to display in search results. It also has a stable of hundreds of photographers that local merchants can bring in to shoot panoramas of their business that Google then feeds into search results.
Smith and Fonger wrote that they will be be shutting down the Appetas service and “working with our customers to transition their websites over to alternative platforms.”
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