Google have announced a new way to run local ads in the form of location extensions. According to Google the location extension allows you to “expand your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads”. Google offers two ways to get your address listed with your ads: you can link your AdWords campaign to your Local Business Centre account or you can manually enter the address directly into the AdWords if you are not the primary business owner.
Google state that once the extensions are set up they will be able to dynamically match your business location to a user’s location or search terms and show the address with your text ad. This is something Google have been trialing for a while but is certainly a good idea particularly as it can show locality straight away and it will be great for small businesses that have different stores in different locations. Also with people increasingly searching on the go with mobile applications makes the use of local extensions even more useful especially with the accuracy in which triangulation provides location data compared with IP.
Once live the local extensions will mean that local business ads will no longer be a separate ad format as you can now create local ads with extensions from scratch or rather add extensions to your existing text ads. Google states that existing local ads will continue to run as normal so long as you do no edit them. If you want to display your address in only one particular ad then you can still do so by setting up a specific location extension for individual ads.
At present it would appear that this is to be released in the US and Google have given no confirmation as of yet on when it will be brought across the pond so I guess we will have to hold tight for the time being…