Facebook is backing off from the local/small business space — or at least parts of it. A few days after dropping its check-in service for Facebook Places, the company is now getting out of the deals business.

In a statement reported by Reuters, Facebook says its Deals product will go away “in the coming weeks.”

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses,” Facebook added in the statement. “We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.”

To be clear, this is the Facebook “Social Deals” product — its Groupon competitor — that was launched back in April. (As opposed to the check-in deals product that is apparently staying alive in some form despite the announcement earlier this week.)

Social deals required participating businesses to have a Facebook page and allowed the merchants to offer deals that didn’t specifically offer a percentage-based discount.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information and will update this post if we learn more.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Facebook

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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