Other than Google’s now defunct Local Listings ads experiment, I haven’t seen this before: a Place Page pin showing up in a paid result.
Google has been experimenting with the format of its local organic results, but I haven’t seen the blue pins in AdWords before. Anyone?
August 7th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I know it’s possible to link a place page to an adwords account (or specific campaign), but i haven’t seen location pins either, and i’m not seeing them on my ads right now. usually they just show up as an additional line under the ad with an address or just the city name.
you may have stumbled upon a rare Google experiment…
August 7th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Sort of like the aurora borealis; so it would seem.
August 7th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I wonder if this is a new form of Location Extension or something…it seems like it must be coming from the Adwords side rather than the Places side…
August 7th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
It’s probably tied to local extensions if you’ve claimed/verified a listing on Places.
August 9th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Hi Greg,
I actually noticed something similar a few days ago when doing a local search, the sponsored link above the 7 pack actually had a drop down box that could expand to show the business locations with Map Pins… for the life of me I can’t remember what the location keyword was but I’ll see if I can replicate it again and grab a screen shot for you.
I’m based in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, normally we are at the back of the queue when it comes to new features.
Cheers,
Andrew Baker
August 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Andrew: Thanks. Google just released an expandable map ad for mobile and it has offered these types of ads online in the past. But there seems to be some experimentation going on.
August 9th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
My question would immediately be…I wonder if you can associate the Places page with a different login? To clairfy…I mean have an Adwords account with one login and to be able to use this feature with an account that has claimed their Places page under a different Google login. Only time will tell.
August 9th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Jozef-
You can associate one Google Places account (meaning all the listings contained within it) per Campaign on Adwords. You can also manually add as many addresses (Not place pages) as you like.
I don’t know if the pin Greg found will show up for manually added addresses, it may only be for true Google Places listings. Any ideas on that Greg?
August 13th, 2010 at 10:03 am
@Jozef foerch:
You cannot associate two different Logins to use this feature:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=144545
“(…) Business owners – Use addresses from Google Places: Select this option to link an existing Google Places account to your campaign. Eligible addresses from your Google Places account may be shown with your ad when relevant. (…)”
You have to login to your Google (AdWords) Account with the same Login which you use to manage your Place Pages…
August 17th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
[...] also: Place Page Pin in AdWords and Chris Smith’s excellent piece about the potential SEO impact on SMBs and IYPs from this [...]
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Hi Greg,
You wrote an article about this last year, I wonder if this was them figuring out what to do about Places before they changed from LBL!
http://searchengineland.com/google-appears-to-be-testing-new-local-adwords-presentation-30250
September 2nd, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Jason: It seems to be the cousin of LBL . .. I’m going to guess they probably observed some pretty strong CTRs on those blue pins but didn’t want to create the separate inventory that negatively impacted more conventional AdWords advertisers.