Local Ads help businesses with a physical location or service area reach users. Advertisers can use Local Ads to drive marketing objectives like store visits, store sales, local leads (such as calls and directions), and website traffic. These ads feature key business information such as your star rating, address, phone number, store images, and store hours, often sourced from your linked Google Business Profile.
Advertisers must have their location assets linked at the account or campaign level to be eligible for Local Ads.
Local Ads serve on Performance Max and Search. For Local Services Ads, check Local Services Help for more details.
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Benefits
Here are some of the potential benefits of Local Ads:
- Offer multiple ways to engage: Make it easy for users to take action, such as getting directions, calling your business, or visiting your website.
- Drive offline sales and visits: Increase foot traffic and in-store sales. You can measure and optimize for these outcomes using Store Visits or Direction Conversions.
- Generate and track valuable calls: Local ads help users discover your business and find out how to call. Phone calls can be configured as biddable conversions when call tracking is enabled, allowing you to measure and optimize for call leads. Local Ads feature the phone number you provide in the ad creative or the phone number of the business location from Google Business Profile (GBP).
- Drive relevant website traffic from local searches: Guide users who are interested in your local business or offerings from your Local Ads to your website.
- Reach customers actively searching locally across Google: Show up prominently when potential customers are looking for businesses like yours nearby on Google Search, Google Maps, and Waze, maximizing your visibility where local decisions are made.
- Showcase your business with richer, more engaging ads: Automatically display rich, up to date information such as store hours, address, customer reviews, photos, and service options sourced from your Google Business Profile. Combine these with assets you provide in Google Ads (like Image Assets) to serve rich ad formats that give potential customers a better understanding of your offerings and what makes your business unique.
How they work
Local Ads help users on google.com, Google Maps, and Waze to discover and engage with your business. When users search for nearby businesses on google.com, Maps, or Waze, your business location can be prominently featured above other options.
Local Ads promote information such as open hours, address, images or videos, reviews and other relevant assets to help users choose your business.
Linking your Google Business Profile to Google Ads enables location assets, which allows your ads to show in these local formats across Search, Maps, and other surfaces.
Local Ads on Search
- On the initial search results page: Your ads can appear as independent ad-units or embedded ads within organic modules. These might appear as text ads enhanced with your location details, or in more visually prominent formats such as Carousel Ads displaying multiple images or locations, or Collection Ads grouping similar local results. These formats often include clear Calls to Action (CTAs) such as buttons or links, enabling users to directly 'Call' the business, get 'Directions', or visit the 'Website'.
- When viewing an expanded list of places: If a user clicks to view more local results (for example, by clicking "More places"), your ads can also be shown within this full list. In this view, your ads are designed to appear seamlessly alongside other business listings, clearly marked as "Sponsored."
Media assets are pulled from an array of sources (for example, merchant photos or videos from Google Business Profile, image asset extensions, Google curated aerial view 3D videos of the location) along with a “map.” Clicking on the Map opens driving directions to the business.
Location-specific merchant uploaded assets help potential customers get a deeper understanding of the physical location, which could help drive store visits, leads (such as calls to the physical location) or online sales. However, if an advertiser wants to only show campaign-specific assets, they can opt-out of showing merchant photos but it could impact the performance of the ad.
Multiple Local Ad formats are available on Search, and Google determines which format is shown based on user query, ad-relevance, and overall context.
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Local Ads on Maps
When customers search for businesses, explore a local area within Google Maps, or navigate to a place, Google matches these actions to your business’s location. Users located nearby or that show interest in your location may view your ad.
Your ads can show on the map at your location as square pins and within search results in Google Maps. Keep in mind that these two ad formats don't necessarily appear together, so while your Local Ads will show as square pins in Google Maps, they may not also appear within search results on Google Maps.
Learn more about how to Show local ads on Google Maps.
Local Ads on Waze
When drivers search for businesses or are navigating along their route, Waze matches these actions to your business's location, helping you reach users who are nearby or actively looking for places to visit. Waze allows you to promote your business to people on the go, offering an effective way to capture attention when it matters most.
Your ads can appear as promoted places on Waze, which are location-based square pins that show up along a user’s driving route. These pins allow users to tap and view more details about your business, providing them with essential information as they navigate on their journey.
Learn more About Performance Max for store goals.
What do Local Ads cost
Billing for Local Ads depends on your campaign configuration. For Search and Performance Max campaigns, you may be charged a standard cost-per-click (CPC) for the following clicks on your ads:
- Clicks on headline or sitelinks that take users to the advertiser provided web page
- Click on a headline that opens up the Google Business Profile
- Clicks on “map” to open driving directions
- Click on any of the action buttons (for example, Call, Directions, Website)
- Clicks on map pins
You will only be charged for one click type, even if a user clicks more than one of the above items.
Swipe interactions on the media carousel, or clicks on media assets that do not take users to the landing page or Business Profile are not charged.
On maps, Performance Max for store goals campaigns charge cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) when users view a branded logo pin on Maps. Learn more about Performance Max for store goals.
Getting started with Local Ads
- Essential prerequisite: Link your location data
- To be eligible for Local Ads, you must provide location data through Location Assets. There are two main types:
- Location Assets (using Google Business Profile): If you own your business locations, the recommended way is to link your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account. This allows your ads to show accurate location information. In Google Ads, navigate to 'Assets' > 'Location' to link your GBP.
- Affiliate Location Assets: If you sell products or provide services through retail chains or locations you don't own, you can use Affiliate Location Assets. You can set this up under 'Assets' > 'Affiliate location'.
- You must link your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account using Location Assets. This allows your ads to show accurate location information.
- To be eligible for Local Ads, you must provide location data through Location Assets. There are two main types:
Learn more about setting up both types in About location assets. (Check troubleshooting for sync issues).
- Using local conversion actions: When your location assets are active, Google Ads automatically creates various local actions conversions that users take after viewing your local ad. These help you measure the impact of your ads on driving local engagement. Learn more About local actions conversions.
- Key actions include:
- Get directions: Users clicking for directions to your location. (Biddable in Performance Max & Search)
- Clicks to call: Users clicking the call button. (Biddable in Performance Max)
- Website visits: Users clicking on the website link shown with your location. (Reporting only)
- Click-to-message (CTM): Messaging extensions triggering WhatsApp or text outreach.
To have your campaigns actively optimize for the biddable actions (Get directions, Clicks to call), you need to ensure these conversion actions are set to "Primary" in your Conversion settings and are included in the conversion goals for your campaigns. Learn more About conversion goals.
Campaign optimization best practices
Choosing the right campaign type and bidding strategy
- Campaign types for Local Ads:
- Performance Max with store goals: Best for maximizing visits to your physical stores and local actions (calls, directions) by reaching customers across all of Google's channels.
- Search campaigns: Also effective for driving local actions, primarily on Google Search, when location assets are used.
- Bidding to drive local actions:
- To get more calls, directions, or store visits, you must choose a bidding strategy that focuses on conversions or conversion value.
- Recommended automated strategies: Use Google's AI-powered Smart Bidding:
- For any campaign type, select strategies like Maximize conversions (to get the most local actions within your budget) or Maximize conversion value (to get the most value, if you assign different values to calls, directions, or store visits).
- Targets can also be set (for example, Target CPA and Target ROAS).
The Importance of high quality visual assets
- For Local Ads, the quality and availability of your images and videos significantly impact user engagement, click-through rates, and how often your ads are shown, as many formats are visually oriented. Providing authentic, high quality visuals helps your ads stand out. Much of this visual content is drawn directly from your Google Business Profile, so keeping your GBP assets (photos and videos) up to date and high quality is crucial for effective Local Ads.
Troubleshooting common issues
Google Business Profile and location syncing problems
- If your locations aren't syncing correctly, verify GBP permissions and check for filters in Google Ads under Assets > Location. Ensure locations aren’t disapproved.
- For comprehensive guidance, learn more About location assets.
"Get directions" or "Clicks to call" not tracking
- Ensure the 'Get directions' and 'Clicks to call' conversion actions are active and set to "Primary".
- Learn more About local actions conversions.
Store visit eligibility and reporting
- Store visits tracking has specific eligibility requirements.
- Learn more About store visit conversion.
