Google Local Business Ads Score New Features

The Google AdWords team has announced a group of new features for Local Business Ads, some of which are in place now, and others that will be coming soon.

In place now are new links that will appear at the bottom of the ad’s info window: Get Directions, Street View, and/or Save to My Maps. Here’s a look at my wife’s local business ad showing two of the new links:

(We don’t have Street View in our little backwater hamlet, but maybe someday.)

A “Send” link will be added soon, allowing searchers to send business information to their phone or email address. If I’m reading the announcement correctly, advertisers won’t pay when searchers click on these links: “Users will still be able to click through to your site if they wish — the info window simply offers additional free functionality.”

Also coming soon — in “a few weeks,” according to the announcement — is a new report detailing things like how often an ad’s info window was opened and how often users clicked on the new links.

Google’s announcement emphasizes that these new features won’t be available to all advertisers: “… while local business ads can appear in several countries and on a number of web properties, the changes described here will only affect local business ads that appear on Google Maps.”