A few weeks back I was checking my local listings I keep for clients and saw an ad for it there smack in the middle of the page.  Below is a screen shot of the listing.

I didn’t really bother with it because it didn’t look like something that would make much difference.  Well, yesterday my client in San Jose called and said Google called me and said that they wanted to sell me a listing on Google Maps.  I said “I promise you weren’t speaking to Google”.  Knowing the market and how much he gets solicited I knew he was taking the bait for some scam.  Google only speaks to high end Google Adwords clients as far as I am aware.  My client convinced me to call him and had an extension and a name.  I thought I was going to bust someone lying but sure enough it was Google.  Really, Google hired sales people to call on local owner verified listing?  Its odd but ok, I am listening.  I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with him gathering as much info as I could but I could tell he didn’t have much.

Here is what I learned…..San Jose CA and Houston TX are the only cities with this available to them.  You have to have a owner verified account and a certain amount of impressions.  My client has over 1800 impressions on his Google Local Listing.  You can image how long it took me to ask “can I have it for my business?” and he said “I am sorry it is only available in two markets”.  He did say it was coming soon and that they have a plan to roll it out nationally but he was not included in that plan so he did not know when.

I asked him for stats on click through rates and if they are increasing and he said “I am not sure we are planning on going over that after the program is 60 days old.  They obviously don’t want to release any data yet.

My theory is…If they have hired sales people then they are serious about this and that they want this to become the standard for all listings.  This would mean everyone would be paying $25 and no one would stand out.

Non the less it is interesting and I believe I will ask my client to be a test dummy for this project.  I normally test everything before passing it over but I obviously can’t get it.

Thanks LAD Custom Publishing….We value your business!

Thank you Salon Pure for your business and we are excited to deliver the finished product.