Mike:

I take a more business approach to this new change. I also acknowledge that it is an affront the concept of your places page, which includes the “bubble” that now carries ads.

The hypocrisy is that Google is out there aggressively trying to get SMB’s to claim their google pages and build them. Of course by doing that it gives google one more gmail account, one more contact, one more effort to try and get some direct advertising money from them via adwords, adwords express and a growing number of sources.

So its a visual affront to look at your branded page that google urged you to claim….and see someone else’s ad there.

So much for claiming “your page”. Its Googles page and always has been. This is the ugly truth in stark adwords dollars.

Meanwhile I see very little traffic in this direction. For every business I work on discovery searches are more important than recovery searches, and of all the visits a stark minority go to the places page.

I use adwords for every account. Adwords generates much more traffic than visits to the places page for every business. In all cases we spend fairly aggressively. In many cases we rank first for a phrase…but not in all cases.

Now here is the tricky thing with adwords and something that could occur with regard to these ads.

In my limited searching so far, it appears that the ad that falls under a bubble in your map on your places page is the first ranked and quite possibly the ad representing the advertiser paying the most. Yes Quality concerns for ads could be part of the package that impacts whose ad falls in your bubble but clearly bid price has a big part of it.

Now do I want some SOB competitor showing in my bubble???

HELL NO. (actually that is theory–I’m going to work through this differently)

That could be the reaction of a lot of businesses as they get wind of this. If so….well you could get a chain reaction of bids….to the extent that various advertisers become aware of it.

Frankly, while I’m adding to the conversation about this I don’t think I’ll say I’ll add other writings as I don’t feel like being a shill for google advertising…at least not this version.

There is something else about “branded searches”. I personally discovered this after running a ReachLocal (ugh= ripoff in my opinion) and reviewing a Yodle (=another rip off) wherein the resellers tape calls that hit their ads that show redirected phone numbers. I’m also not the only one who noticed this phenomena about “branded searches”. Do a google search for ReachLocal Reviews or Yodle reviews and you will see a LOT of other businesses that discovered the same thing.

A lot of searchers are looking for your phone number. They may not be potential customers at all. They are existing customers, sales people, etc etc. They found the ads with your business name on RL or Yodle call the redirect phone number and are taped trying to sell you something or calling you about service or some other issue totally not connected to sales.

The RL and Yodle ads typically run on discovery search phrases….but people are looking for your phone number on the web. They’ll use branded search…they’ll use discovery search. If your phone numbe is highly visible they will call you.

Again go to the pages about reviews of Yodle or RL and you will see a lot of unhappy people with those adwords resellers with lots of complaints including that particular issue.

As for me and my accounts I’m going to look at the branded results for our businesses and the competitors and then make individual decisions. The decisions will be based on overall spend, the effectiveness of the spend and not based on whether our ad shows in our bubble or not or does a direct competitor’s ad show.

Greg Sterling’s comment that Google might charge one to erase a competitive ad from showing in your bubble is something that has been in play for years. More recently I took calls from Yelp salespeople referencing that as part of the aggressive sales pitch.

Simply I hope the appearance of these ads doesn’t unleash a cavalcade of new ppc spending…..especially by those businesses whom we direct compete against.

Yes it is bad taste, yes some of the ads strain credibility in the framework of where they show. Still I wonder if this won’t work to push spends up on the google bid system.

Mike,

For some reason I find this case less offensive than when they were advertising on my name in web results. At least this is clearly my BUSINESS rather than my individual person.

For some reason, I cannot get the screenshot slideshow to work 🙁

But your observations just fill me with gloom.

Thanks, Mike! That worked 🙂

Unbelievable! I’d be spitting feathers if I were David or Andrew. And as to the abortion ads – just so inappropriate 🙁

As you say, this is when it really gets brought home that Google is a machine and doesn’t have the social niceties or aesthetic judgement of a human.