Gold Stars without Using AdWords Express

[JoyHawkins]

I've been waiting for this for so long! Looks like you can finally get gold stars from Google Plus reviews without using AdWords Express!

Finally!!!!!

AdWords Location Extensions Can Now Get you Gold Stars | Imprezzio Marketing

 

[Linda Buquet]

Awesome Joy! That's great news - thanks for sharing!

I'm sure this will make other consultants that use Adwords for clients, very very happy!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I remember begging Google for this years ago. Apparently it takes them some time to listen to me haha!

 

[Phil Rozek]

Wow. Finally. It's always frustrated me that AdWords Express had this one advantage over grown-up AdWords.

Thanks, Joy!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Time to start calling all your AdWords Express customers and tell them they can switch! No more wasting thousands of dollars on the Google Display Network. Yay!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Here's to CTR going through the roof!

 

[Dave]

Not working for me yet, Joy. I'll give it a couple of more days...to see if it is up officially, if there is a glitch...to see if there is announcement on it.

BTW: The croydon UK example is interesting. It doesn't appear to me that smb has adwords competition. It also appears via search that smb is first in the PAC, has the most reviews, and is first in organic under the PAC...in organic....and it has the one and only ad.

That smb SHOULD dominate and dominate traffic for that phrase. They MAY NOT WANT to show the address...because that feature in the ad will create more paid clicks and take from free clicks. But without competition the ads should be CHEAP.

We have some serps that are like that...with dominance. SMB's need to make decisions on that possible tradeoff.

In any case I'm waiting to see if this clicks in for us. So far NO LUCK.

 

[Dave]

Saturday.

Its showing for me now!!!! Based on this news on Friday I cleaned up some connections with adwords accts and the GMB records. Frankly before then I didn't see it as a priority. Now its big.

In our case it took a day for everything to sync and for the review stars to start showing. I'm going to have to go through a lot of ad placements now.

When there is a lot of competition for ads, the ads get skinnier and they won't always show site links. When there are few ads, the depth of an ad will expand and show site links.

Ad placement could be critical. Ads on top will tend to show site links. Ads in the group of ten and below the top and/or on the side might not.

Meanwhile how google will display this across the board is up to google.

I have no doubt this will draw visitors like bees to honey.

SMB's who advertise or will start advertising will have to figure this out.

We have smb's with very strong PAC and organic rankings. Frankly I don't want all the traffic going to ads. I like that free traffic....and advertising aggressively is expensive.

BUT IT IS A VERY BIG CHANGE!!! Pay attention.

 

[valesence]

this is huge! I actually maintained advertising with adwords express for a long time just because of the gold star rating. I am a big believer in the power of those stars and the influence they have on clicks.

For me however I am also caught in a quandary. If my local listing is ranking at the top or near the top for a keyword I would hate to have all my trafic going to my adwords listing because of the attention it draws. My plan is to research my position with each keyword and enable the location extension on keywords that perform badly in local packs. This is going to take some testing but I am convinced it will help ctr a lot.

 

[Dave]

this is huge! I actually maintained advertising with adwords express for a long time just because of the gold star rating. I am a big believer in the power of those stars and the influence they have on clicks.

For me however I am also caught in a quandary. If my local listing is ranking at the top or near the top for a keyword I would hate to have all my trafic going to my adwords listing because of the attention it draws. My plan is to research my position with each keyword and enable the location extension on keywords that perform badly in local packs. This is going to take some testing but I am convinced it will help ctr a lot.

I agree. I'm glancing through it on Sunday for yesterday and today's traffic. Not much in general.

I'm definitely going to place this in strategic phrases and locations. We get lots more organic than paid traffic and I don't want that to change too much.

I see a lot of testing and trial and error coming up.

Also its not showing on mobile....and that is close to half our traffic.