In the third week of November, readers sent me screen shots of a new Google Adwords Local Display Type that included a Blue Map Pin & address. Readers continued to ask about the test as it showed up in their markets so I asked Frederick Vallaeys, a Product Evangelist  for Google AdWords, for more information about the test. Here is what he said:

Hi Mike,

Here’s what we’re doing… For a small percentage of traffic, location extensions (and legacy LBAs) that appear as top ads or top right-hand side ads will be part of an experiment wherein:

There is no opt in or out of this experiment at this time.  If you want to be eligible to participate in the experiment, you should set up location extensions in your account.  If you do not want your ads to take part in the experiment, you can pause your location extensions ads.  Keep in mind that this experiment only affects a small percentage of traffic, so you shouldn’t see any major change in your statistics.

Hope that answers all your questions.
-Fred

Is it possible that this test relates to the recently ended Local Listing Ad tests and is an attempt to create a more unified presentation of the ad results?