Oh what fun it is to ride with Gooooo-gle Maps explained, hey! So what to do?

Start shopping! Or find your way to a nice restaurant. Get coupons, because we’re in the middle of a crisis here! Or in search of some entertainment and track Rudolph and Santa.

All with a little bit of help from Google. Because they’ve put together some special holiday solutions for you guys. Spread the word and go check it out here: http://maps.google.com/holidays

via: LatLong

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

What to do for Christmas..

It’s been a while ago that Google introduced a very easy way to embed a Google Map into your website, without needing to sign up for a Google Maps API key.
A lot of website owners are using these embedded maps because it’s very easy to implement on your website by just going to the link button on the right side of your screen.

Well this might be a no-brainer, but I’ve seen it often go wrong:
If you are a business owner (using Adwords), and have some ‘Local Business Ads’ running or if you have some of your competitors local business ads appearing in the Google Map near your store location make sure you don’t embed this map! Try using different keywords or your direct business location for your marker to appear and try again. Otherwise you might end up having an embedded map like the one below on your website – triggering info balloons that are too wide for the window to contain them, having links to your competitors, or even your own paid advertisements where people would be able to click, resulting them to go to the website where they already are or away from your website! In any case, money or effort not well spent.

an example, showing results for hotels in Barcelona.

View Larger Map

Now another question raises. My website is now displaying ads, although they are embedded in Google Maps, I still consider these ads to be shown on my website (although this open for discussion, being it an iframe). So where is my PPC award if someone clicks these markers? Isn’t an embedded map – into some extent – the Adsense content network?

Feel free to leave a comment and discuss..

Post from: Local Search - martijnbeijk.com

When you embed your own Google Maps, don’t forget to…