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.
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..
Great tip Martijn!
I’ll have to share this with my clients. I did not realize that you can do this without the API key now. Very cool.
Thanks,
-Don
Hi Dan!
Thanks for dropping by. These easy to embed maps make it very easy indeed.
Although you can’t customize the maps like you would like to do when using the API. I find them particularly handy when you create a ‘My Map’ and want to share that info.
Good question you put up there! I don’t see any reason why this is different than the google content network. As far as I know they always use an iframe for displaying ads.
Maybe this is a feature google will bring up in the future? Don’t know. I guess they don’t see any reason to share their profits with the publishers.. As far as I know there is no good alternative for google maps.
If you want to add maps to all the locations mentioned on a page, you can also use MapMyPage. It doesn’t require an API key. Just copy one line of JavaScript into a web page and MapMyPage will automatically add Google Maps to all the locations mentioned in the page.
http://www.mapmypage.com
Google should let user to choice whether to show similar business nearby or not. something like : http://www.googlemap.com/show.php?showbusiness=0