Google Ads Now in our Business 'Bubbles' in Maps

CHR

CHR

Design matters
Nov 28, 2002
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Aaaaaaargh!

Just out today, Google is placing ads directly in the pop-up Map bubbles for individual business listings. Ours is showing '25% Off Best Sellers' from FTD.com.

Read more on Mike Blumenthal's blog.

Mike surmises that a business' own ads would kick off a competitor's, but that's not true. We run both Adwords and Adwords Express and still get an FTD's ad under our name.

This is seriously outrageous, especially in light of FTD sending so many of us cease & desist letters to stop showing ads for a query of their own name.

Who are you seeing advertising under your own shop name?
 
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even tho our web addr is in the top half of the bubble, FTd is below with their "official site" no we're not a member of theirs either.
 
I checked Midland, mine does NOT have one, only my data shows up, HOWEVER, I checked 3 competitors, all of whom are in wire services, and they all have a TF $10.00 off ad that shows up under their listing in the map-pop....

ALSO interesting, the "site previews" are "preview not available" EXCEPT on the paid national ads, all the locals do not display...

Found a new (?) OG too... new thread coming...
 
Is anyone surprised?
Google is a multi billion dollar publicly traded company that generates the bulk of their revenue from advertising on their Google search engine. So in a nutshell those that pay will get the best placement, those that pay more will get the best of the best. Everything Google does is with the eventual goal of increasing revenue. They tackle this from two sides,

1) They continuously work on improving the search experience for the user with the goal of becoming the search engine of choice.
More Users = More Traffic, More Traffic justifies higher advertising rates

2) They continuously seek out more options to provide advertisers in order to obtain a larger portion of advertisers spend.

Googles challenge is trying to balance the two.

I have often wondered just how long it will be before the 3 paid ads at the top of the search results became the "4 paid ads". I can't think of an easier way for Google to up their revenue virtually overnight. However the risk to Google is that if the front page becomes no more than a billboard, users will be frustrated and may migrate to another search engine.

My suggestion to any business working to increase on-line revenue is not to put all your eggs in the Google basket. The reality is that you could find that your on-line business drops substantially based on the next Google update, or the one after that.
 
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CHR said:
Aaaaaaargh!

Just out today, Google is placing ads directly in the pop-up Map bubbles for individual business listings. Ours is showing '25% Off Best Sellers' from FTD.com.

Read more on Mike Blumenthal's blog.

Mike surmises that a business' own ads would kick off a competitor's, but that's not true. We run both Adwords and Adwords Express and still get an FTD's ad under our name.

This is seriously outrageous, especially in light of FTD sending so many of us cease & desist letters to stop showing ads for a query of their own name.

Who are you seeing advertising under your own shop name?
Click to expand...
1-800 flowers shows up in mine....any idea how to fight this??
 
Doug Munro said:
in a nutshell those that pay will get the best placement, those that pay more will get the best of the best
Click to expand...
Yes, while that's true, I don't think they should include national advertisers in local map results....
 
BOSS said:
Yes, while that's true, I don't think they should include national advertisers in local map results....
Click to expand...

In a perfect world you would be right. However considering the potential revenue for Google of every single pixel on a search page, I suspect we will see a lot more of this, the only things that will limit how far it goes are

1) The willingness of advertisers to pay based on their ROI
2) How much advertising users will tolerate before they jump ship.

Part of the problem with Google is that it's easy to forget it is a business as well as being the most used search engine on the planet.
 
I so lucked out on this one. Mine is:

The Secret GARDEN
The Secret Garden InStock Today
Only $19.95 & Fast Shipping!

From some China book company. Thank heavens the first owners loved that book LOL. But seriously this bites the big one. Just earlier this month we were all singing their praises for getting some of the unlocals out of local search results... now they find a way to weasel back in.

I am not mad about them using ad space, good for them it's a way to make money. What I'm mad about is the fact that it is not local businesses being advertised there. I know it's a relative search term thing but still. I am just shaking my head at the good old "local" advocates at google.

I'm glad you mentioned that your paid ads are not showing Cathy I was going to ask if that would make a difference. ​
 
Oh and I'll continue my rant....

Local customers do make the mistake of thinking those are my ads. I have had it happen a couple of times. One guy said, I'm looking at your website and you have this purse full of roses for $29.99 I want that.... ummm no we don't. I explained to him that those were paid ads and I had no control over what showed up there. He was not on our website he was on our PLACES page. He said, "well you shouldn't put that there if you don't have it". I tried like heck to explain that it was not me that put that there, it was google. He just couldn't understand it.

I would seriously pay a monthly subscription to google to keep my place page and map ad free... think about that google. I would go as high as $100 a month to get those ads off. I wonder how much they make in revenue on our little town (about 100k people) and if that would be worth it to them. Oh well, a girl can dream can't she.
 
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I guess I've really lucked out. Sad to see the big white open area there though, it probably means I've searched myself so many times on this computer that Google knows I'm not looking for anything else.

Interesting that the pages they offer under my main results keep changing, must be that freshness thing.

Here's a screen shot. Would love it if someone else wanted to do a search and see if an ad shows up for you in my bubble.

Google_search_bubble.png
 
Here Linda is what I got
 
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This ad was under your name Linda. When I clicked it this is where it took me. Notice the address... looks like a real store huh. It looks fishy and when I mapped it the results are weird. Don't think it's an actual store but it sure has an actual address :(
 
Rhonda and Lori, did you search "Anytime Flowers"? I think that's the only way the bubble comes up, no clue really.

I used "Anytime Flowers" as my search term, not St. Paul Florist.

Lori, Linsk is an old and respected shop in Minneapolis, no worries there. I'm calling Dick to tell him his site looks suspicious ~ well ~ maybe not! lol
 
I have 4 adds in my bubble.Yellowpages, Just Flowers that says save $10,Teleflora that also says save $10, and FTD that says free delivery.Also in my area google has changed the google places so that only the florists that are in the center of downtown come up. They picked some point on the map and if you are the closest you show on page 1 for places if you are farther away you don't. Thats it. No matter what you do it doesn't make any difference.

Dianne
 
I just searched ours, and find a From You Flowers, $19.99 same day ad. I also noticed that we now show only one star, where it used to be 4.
One florist downtown shows that they are 100% Australian owned and operated!
 
Peggy ~ click on the reviews immediately, those stars are your rating from customer comments. Make sure you don't have someone playing games and making 1star ratings, that's bad! If they are legitimate complaints, make sure and find out what they are and resolve it ~ also comment on the comments so people who view those reviews know that you are actively dealing with any bad experiences.

My best bet is they are bogus and in that instance, you need to report them to whatever search engine was used like yelp, google, or yahoo.
 
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