Google has made AdWords a little bit more local for businesses by allowing them to run location extensions on ads. According to Google, location extensions allow you to “extend” your AdWords campaigns by attaching your business address to your ads.
Once you link you AdWords campaign to your Google business center account, Google will dynamically match a business’s locations to a user’s location or search terms and show the appropriate address with text ads. If Google can’t approximate the searcher’s address, then the ad will be shown without an address. You can turn off the dynamic feature and show a specific address with a particular ad, so that the address shown is not based on the searcher’s location. The ads can be shown with their address extensions on Google and Google Maps and as regular text ads without the extensions on partner sites in the Search and Content Networks.
Now that AdWords has introduced the location extensions feature, Google says local business ads won’t be a separate ad format, as local business ads will include the extensions. This is all part of Google’s attempt to crack the online local advertising market, which remains a challenge (and opportunity) for all the big Web companies. (Local is one of the five new areas of focus of AOL as well under new CEO Tim Armstrong).