Small Business Trends: Google Gives Small Business Advertisers A Boost
Lisa Barone offers analysis of Google’s new online local advertising service, Boost. It’s only available in San Francisco, Chicago and Houston so far.
“Google is giving small business owners a ‘boost’ with their search marketing efforts with a new ad product called, yeah, you guessed it – Google Boost. On Monday (after being outed by Mike Blumenthal), Google unveiled its new ad solution designed to help small business owners connect with customers in their area. According to Google, the new platform is designed to give SMB owners “a quick and easy way to share information about themselves with the people who look for them online.” Cool.
Boost is currently only available to local business owners in San Francisco, Chicago and Houston, however, with wide-scale roll out, all SMB owners will be able to create ads directly from their Google Places account. The ads will contain a mix of basic company information (company name, address, phone number, Web site URL), as well as additional information like the number of reviews you have, your average star rating, and a link to your Place page for additional information. The ads will appear in the Sponsored Links section of Google.com and Google Maps pages and, just like with traditional search ads, will appear based on the ads quality and the keywords and location information entered by the searcher.”