Most people find a local business on Google in one of two places: the search results or the map. A local business's ads can show in both, and in both places they lean on the same source of information: the Google Business Profile, the listing that shows the business's address, phone number, hours, photos and reviews.
That makes the profile part of the ad. If the hours on the profile are wrong, the ad shows wrong hours. If the phone number on the profile isn't the one the business answers, the call from the ad goes somewhere it shouldn't. Our St. Louis sample shows how easily the two drift apart. A third of the twelve businesses listed a phone number on Google that their own websites never mentioned.
This chapter covers how Google's Local Ads draw on the profile, what to fix on the profile before spending, how the map fits in, and the rules that decide what a service-area business can show. It follows Chapter 11, and it's the chapter a business should read before any of the campaigns after Search go live.
Local Ads Pull the Address, Phone Number and Hours Straight From the Business Profile.
Google now uses the name Local Ads for ads that promote a business's location. Its help page describes them as helping "businesses with a physical location or service area reach users," and sets one condition: advertisers "must have their location assets linked at the account or campaign level to be eligible." Local Ads serve on Search and Performance Max campaigns.
Location assets are the piece that carries the profile into the ad. Google is direct about where the information comes from: "Data for location assets used in Google Ads is sourced directly from Google Maps and Google Business Profile." Linking the profile lets Google Ads use, in Google's words, "street address, phone number, hours, and merchant photos and videos."
Two things follow from that. First, a fix made on the profile reaches the ads, within about a day; there's no separate copy of the address or hours to update in Google Ads. Second, anything wrong on the profile goes out in the ads too. Google also notes that a location marked closed on the profile stops showing in the ads.
So the order of work is simple. Before linking the profile to Google Ads, check the name, address or service area, phone number, hours, categories and photos on the profile itself. The hours deserve the most attention: as Chapter 9 found, 9 of the 12 businesses in our sample gave conflicting hours somewhere.
If Your Ad Has No Phone Number of Its Own, Google Shows the One on Your Business Profile. Someone Has to Answer It.
The phone number is where the profile and the ads most often part ways. Back in Chapter 1, half the St. Louis sites we read carried three or more phone numbers, and a third never printed the number their Google listing used.
For Local Ads, that listing number matters because it's the one the ad can show. Google's Local Ads page says the ads feature either a phone number added in Google Ads, such as a call asset, or the phone number on the Business Profile. Without a number of its own, the ad shows the profile's, so that's the line that has to be answered.
Google's own rules for the profile set the bar. The number should connect to the business's location; a local number is preferred over a central call center "whenever possible"; and "the phone number must be under the direct control of the business." Additional numbers can be added on the profile as well.
What that means in practice:
- The profile's main number is a line someone answers during the hours on the profile, not an old number, a personal cell or a number that rings an answering machine by default.
- The same number appears on the website, so the profile, the site and the ads agree, as the audit in Chapter 1 laid out.
- The profile is linked to Google Ads with call history on, so calls from the profile that started with an ad count under Calls from ads, as Chapter 1 set up.
Google Maps Shows Search Ads Only From Campaigns With Location Assets. There's No Maps-Only Campaign.
It's easy to think of "Google Maps ads" as a separate product. They aren't. Google's Maps help page rules out a campaign that runs only on the map. What a local business gets instead is reach onto the map through campaigns it may already run. A Search campaign becomes eligible to show on Maps once location assets apply to it; Performance Max, Demand Gen and Smart Search campaigns can show there too.
For the account this guide has built, that means the Search campaigns from Chapters 6 and 7 can reach Maps once the profile is linked through location assets. No new campaign is needed. The ads can appear for searches made in Maps, with the business's pin and details.
Google's reporting separates the clicks that happen there. The three click types Google lists for Maps are clicks to see location details, clicks for directions and clicks to call from a phone. Segmenting the account's clicks by those types shows how often searchers open the business details, ask for directions or call, and whether that activity turns into calls or just into directions.
A Plumber Working From Home Hides the Address. A Shop With a Sign on the Door Shows It.
Not every local business can show an address, and Google's Business Profile rules decide which kind each one is. The line is whether customers come to the business or the business goes to them.
- Service-area businesses, like a plumber or a cleaning company that works at customers' homes, should hide the address. Google's guidelines use the plumber as the example: one who runs the business from a residential address should clear the address from the profile.
- Storefronts, like a dental office or an auto repair shop, show the address, and Google expects permanent signage with the business name at that address. A business that serves customers there should also have staff on hand during its listed hours.
- Hybrids, like an auto repair shop that also offers roadside service, can show the storefront address and set a service area too.
Some locations don't qualify at all. Google doesn't allow a profile at a virtual office, a rented address where the business doesn't actually operate. A service-area business gets one profile, unless it runs separate locations, each with its own service area and staff.
On the profile, a plumber lists the towns or ZIP codes it covers, 20 at most. Google won't take a radius there, and it asks that the whole area stay within roughly a two-hour drive of the business's base. That's the profile; the ad targeting from Chapter 9 is set separately in Google Ads, and the two should describe the same territory.
Google's description of Local Ads includes businesses that serve an area as well as storefronts, but check that a hidden-address profile links as a location asset before counting on it. The storefront tools from Chapter 10, store visits, store goals built on directions and promoted places on Waze, are built around a location people come to. In our reading, a plumber working from home gives up little there, and Chapter 10's location minimums already rule most of them out.
Our plumbers guide covers the same profile questions for one trade, including the map pack and Local Services Ads.
A Discount for a Review Breaks Google's Rules, and So Does Asking Only the Happy Customers.
Reviews travel with local ads. Google's help page lists reviews among the details Local Ads promote, alongside hours, address, images and videos, which makes them part of the pitch.
Google's contribution policy draws two lines that local businesses cross often. It bars businesses from paying, discounting or giving anything away in exchange for a review. And it doesn't allow them to "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers."
The second one forbids a common tactic: a text sent only to customers the technician thinks were happy. The approach that fits the rules is the plain one: ask every customer, the same way, after every job. In our view, a profile with more honest reviews, including the occasional complaint answered well, does more for an ad than a short list of perfect ones.
You Pay Once When Someone Taps Your Local Ad, Whether They Tap the Headline, the Map or the Call Button.
Local Ads offer more places to tap than a plain text ad, and that raises a fair question about cost. Google's answer: in Search and Performance Max campaigns, a click can be charged for a tap on the headline, a sitelink, the map for driving directions, or an action button such as Call, Directions or Website. But "you will only be charged for one click type, even if a user clicks more than one of the above items."
So a searcher who opens the business details, taps for directions and then taps to call costs one click, not three.
The exception belongs to the multi-location campaigns from Chapter 10: Performance Max for store goals pays by the thousand impressions when people see a branded logo pin on Maps. A single-location business running ordinary Search and Performance Max won't see that charge.
Next: Google Ads AI Max Works Like Broad Match, and Google Writes Some of the Ads.
With the profile, the Search campaigns and, for bigger accounts, Performance Max in place, one feature remains. Chapter 13 covers AI Max, which widens matching and lets Google write parts of the ads, and why it comes last in a local account.
Every chapter is on the guide's home page. If you'd rather have someone check the profile and link it, our Google Ads management audits the Business Profile before any local ad goes live.
