Tag Archive for: Google Local Business Center

As posted in article by PC World, even Google can make errors on occasion.  In this case, some statistics for users of Google Business Center were sent to incorrect Business Center users.  This included information such as how often the business had appeared in listings, how many times the business was clicked and follow-through clicks on the business site itself.

This error was found to have been by human mistake, not an error directly with any of Google’s systems.  Google was on top of it and corrected it quickly.  They published a written statement to acknowledge the error and that when they discovered it, said they paused all emails to Business Center users until they could determine the cause of the issue.

Google AdWords has had an update recently, and it now appears you can actually advertise and have your address appear on Google Maps with your ad:

Example of AdWords on Google Maps

Example of AdWords on Google Maps

This involves having Google Local set up (also known as Local Business Center).  If you don’t know how to do this, you can check out my earlier post on putting your business on Google Maps.

Once you have a business account set up and associated with the same address you have on your AdWords account, you can get your ad to show up on Google Maps by editing your Campaign settings and then under Locations, open the “Show relevant addresses with your ads (advanced)” option.

AdWords Campaign Setup

AdWords Campaign Setup

Here the easy way to do it is to choose the first option, which is to select your Google Local Business Center account, which will put your address information into your ad and also put a matching blue “pushpin” on Google Maps for you.

The alternate choice you have (if you don’t have an associated Google Local account set up) is to put in the address and phone number manually, in the second option here.  This will also display this information with your ad.

Keep in mind, the only way this will work is if the keyword that is being searched on is relevant to the locality your address is in.  For example, a city name.  (Just the way Google Maps normally appears in search results.)  If your keywords match this type of query, then your address and phone number will appear with your ad, in addition to a little point on Google Maps.  And this is great news for anyone who does local advertising.