AdWords Location Extensions

Recently, 6S Marketing released a Whitepaper on how to rank in Google local, and a portion of the Whitepaper contained tips on how to set up Local Business Ads, which are served in Google Maps, through AdWords. The top 10 best practices for optimizing Google AdWords Local Business Ads that are included in the Whitepaper are:

1. Create a Local Business Listing
2. Create a LBC Campaign
3. Network Targeting
4. Ad Layout
5. Include an Image
6. Include a Logo
7. Ad Description
8. Ad Title
9. Display URL
10. Map Marker

For the comprehensive list of top 10 best practices, download the Whitepaper.

Location Extensions

As of the end of July, Google updated Local Business Ads to feature Location Extensions. According to Google, location extensions allow you to “extend” your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. This is done by linking your AdWords campaign(s) to your Local Business Center account.

If a company has various locations, the location extensions also allow various ads to be associated with a number of store locations, even if the official business address in the company’s LBC account does not correspond to those addresses; a feature that was not currently available.

AdWords will then match an address with a user’s location, or geo-targeted search term, to show an appropriate address to the user. If AdWords cannot determine an appropriate address to show, the Ad will simply show without an address.

If a business owner with various store locations would like more control over which addresses are served with which ads, and not dynamically served, there is the ability to set up specific location extensions for individual ads.

As regular local business ads are served, location extension ads are served in Google and Google Maps only – not on partner sites in the search and content network – regular text ads without location extensions will continue to show here.

For more information, visit the AdWords Help topic on Location Extensions, and for more information on Google Local download the 6S Marketing Whitepaper.