Google Local Advertising
Google just called me to sign me up for a new feature of their local advertising. I talked to the rep for a while to see what the features are to see whether they might be of interest to businesses that I work with, particularly those with a local connection.
Google’s Local Business Center is a free service that Google provides that will place a marker on a map when a keyword search returns your site and other businesses in the results. I recommend signing up and creating a listing for every one of my business clients, since it is all free, and provides more opportunity to be seen and found. Creating your listing requires a Google account, which is also free, and you should be able to create your account at their local business center. From there, you can enter lots of information about your business, including a description where you can feature keyword phrases that you should be found with.
This listing will also give you statistical reports on how often your listing is presented in searches, and how often it is clicked on. This reporting is similar to their AdWords reporting, but doesn’t cost anything.
Their new feature, for which they charge $25/month, is the ability to create “tags” that will show up with your listing to make it stand out from other businesses that you are competing directly against. If you search in Google for “houston auto glass“, you should see several examples of how this can work. In this example (and, as of this date!), there are 3 listings with tags, and, each listing reflects a different option on the tag. You can see from the tags, and from the listings that accompany the tags, that one business linked its tag to it’s web site, one to a coupon offer, and one to a video. There are other options available as well. The New York Times has an article describing how one business in Houston used this tool to its advantage.
I always say that paying for any advertising on the web is strictly a judgment call and must be tested against what it produces for you in your business, but this little feature sounded interesting to me as an option to consider.