Mountain View, California — Google with its vast conglomerate, earns most of its money through its cash cow, AdWords. But in several key markets, Google has not yet fully realized its potential. Now the search engine giant is putting all its efforts by just announcing a new online advertising solution that will help local businesses in expanding their reach, from launching mobile product search offerings, to overhauling their image search in part by adding advertisements and allowing individuals and businesses to tap potential customers in their area called Boost.
With the rise of group buying online, local businesses are eager to target new customers, and will go to great lengths in an attempt to do so, sometimes to their own detriment. Now the search engine company have taken their local business assistance a step further by introducing Google Boost to increase the online presence of businesses. Google’s newly launched advertising solution is a preemptive strike against Facebook Places advertising.
Here is what Boost ads will look like (the blue marker indicates the advertised business):
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According to a post on one of Google’s blogs:
“Research shows that 97% of people conduct research online before buying locally. Hopefully you have gone to Google Places to claim your free business listing that appears on Google and Google Maps. That enables you to share accurate information about your business such as your hours of operation, photos and videos – and now you can do even more.
Boost empowers business organizations who have signed up for Google Places to set up sponsored ad campaigns from within their Places account. Basic setup is simple, and campaign management is automatic; all the business owner needs to do is set a budget, and Google’s advertising algorithm takes care of the details of placement and frequency. Google product manager Kiley McEvoy explains on the Google Lat Long Blog:
To create your ad, all that is required is a short business description, a web or Place page, your business categories and a monthly budget. From there, our system automatically sets up your ad campaign – figuring out the relevant keywords that will trigger your ad to appear on Google and Google Maps, and how to get the most out of the budget you allotted. You’ll only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on your ad, and you can also view basic ad performance data from your Google Places dashboard.
Boost ads will begin to appear when users search for local businesses; they are displayed in the “Sponsored Links” section of Google’s web search and Google Maps, as well. Furthermore, ads will also show up when the right combination of vertical keyword (e.g., “restaurants”) and location keyword (e.g., “San Francisco”) is met.
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The feature will deliver simple information like one’s company name, address, phone number and website, in addition to allowing ads to include the number of reviews a business has received, an average star rating and a link to one’s Place page, allowing customers to learn as much as possible about one’s business.
While many small, local businesses advertise with AdWords, more do not. Local and location-based information has been a focus at Google lately. The company announced it would focus on delivering more geo-specific search results earlier this month, right around the time it named Marissa Mayer, then VP of search product, its location and local services chief.
Boost is currently available in beta in select U.S. cities, namely San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. Interested businesses outside these areas can sign up to receive notification when Boost comes to their area by filling out a form provided by Google.
While search engine leader Google and Facebook are in a tuff fight for ad dollars, and Facebook has been able to gain a competitive benefit by delivering hyper-targeted, highly relevant ads based on user-supplied information. With more location-based information seeping into the network via Facebook Places, Facebook is also poised to lead location-based advertising.
Will it work? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Simplifying it for local business enterprises to buy search ads is something Google needs to do, but it is not just about making it easy to buy ads. From this perspective, it seems that Google Boost might be a step in the right direction for Google, but Google will inevitably have to go further if it truly wants to build lifelong customer relationships with local business owners.