NB: This is guest post by Daniele Beccari, vice president at Isango and a technology consultant
Demonstrating the latest local advertising search features at LeWeb 2010 in Paris this week, Google used scenarios that raise questions on relevancy and accuracy of travel-related search results.
Product specialist and evangelist on mobile and local advertising, Frank Albert Coates, used a hotel search scenario to show how local businesses registered in Google Places can receive superior visibility in search results (paid and natural) thanks to the integration of a map view.
Coates claims connecting the Places account to the AdWords account makes this process seamless.
Integrating maps in the ads increases CTR by 15-30% - “it really works”, he said.
At the same time, he declared that the ad positioning is strictly based on bidding and is not influenced by the Places integration.
Questions from the audience challenged the fact that users might be more interested in finding the same venue from other sources.
For example, travellers might find better rates on other agent sites, or more interested in an independent guest review site, or - in the case of international travel - a customer might prefer to book with a agent in their home country instead of dealing directly with the local venue owner.
But these “other sites” today do not have the right to position themselves on a local map.
According to Coates, the “problem of aggregators” has raised internal discussions between the advertising (AdWords) and map teams at Google, and there is no clear solution.
Coates also demonstrated another controversial functionality called Sponsored Map Icons, currently being tested in Australia and NZ.
Local businesses can pay to display a special color icon on Maps, instead of the traditional grey dot.
See this example where you can see a McDonald’s icon [our emphasis]:
This service is based on a cost-per-impression model instead of the classic cost-per-click.
Once again the audience has questioned how will Google decide which icon is going to be displayed when different businesses are located at the same address, to which Google said it does not have an answer... yet.
NB: This is guest post by Daniele Beccari, vice president at Isango and a technology consultant