Google has been launching ads in plenty of new places lately. In addition to new advertising on YouTube and in Flash games, Google is now putting ads on the bottom of Google Maps pages. A search in Google Maps for something like “los angeles restaurants” will show a slim line ad at the bottom of the map, along with a few pushpin pointing to the location of restaurants with paid ads.

The sponsored links on the maps themselves are not as informative as the non-paid ones, though, but they do catch the eye. I’m not seeing any ads when I simply search for a location. The ads are triggered by keywords, like “restaurants” and “auto repair.”

This is a pretty comprehensive launch, with ads not just showing up in big markets, but around the country for a wide array of search terms. Even my smallish hometown of Medford spits out an ad when I search for “Medford, OR golf courses.” The ads are also up worldwide.

Google has obviously been working a long time on this. There is some suggestion this is in reaction to their stock price falling, but it’s unlikely they could launch this so quickly and comprehensively without a lot of work over the last year or so. But who knows? Maybe they have many such programs tucked in their back pocket, waiting for tough times to get them out there.

Story via Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.