Nine times out of 10, if you’re walking down the street and you search for “coffee” on your smartphone, it’s because you’re in serious need of a cup of joe. You don’t want a Wikipedia article or a website for coffee aficionados, you want a caffeine injection right now – and Google’s on board with you.
Google introduced hyperlocal search ads for mobile devices this morning, bringing you closer to what you want, when you want it.
Surojit Chaterjee, the product manager for Google Mobile Ads, writes that the feature will help to create “more meaningful connections” by delivering “down to the block level information about your business at the right place and the right time.” The results will appear as a OneBox result on mobile devices, which a blue pointer icon and a distance, as long as the smartphone user has allowed Google to use their location.
As we reported earlier today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt this week that mobile search is the future of Google. “Eventually, we think mobile will be the majority of the searches and the majority of the revenue,” he said.
Small steps like the move to this hyperlocal search feature – and getting advertisers to provide the necessary information – are the building blocks to this future.
