iPhone Maps, GPS, local search results and mobile advertising

Raced out last Friday and bought a new iPhone. I had to really; its part of the job these days!

After sorting out a few teething problems, its been a really interesting opportunity to finally see how local search listings are displayed on a mobile device. The iPhone nicely blends your GPS position on the ‘maps’ icon and allows you to type in what you’re interested in.

So for instance, if you’re feeling peckish, just type in ‘restaurants’ and local search results appear as red pins on the map. The blue dot is your location, so you can easily navigate to the place of interest.

Screenshot: iPhone Google Maps local search result showing GPS position

Touching the red pins with your finger brings up the name of the business. Then, if you touch the little blue arrow on the result, you’re taken to the next screen which enables you to call, visit a website, look up the address or get directions, just by touching the various white ‘fields’…

Screenshot: iPhone local search result

It’s so quick, and intuitive! The way technology should be.

If your business is local, you’d be mad if you didn’t create a Google Account and enter your details into the local business centre. It’s free and the benefits are quite obvious.

But what about advertising on a mobile?

Managing Google AdWords for clients is part of the gig here and I’ve always gazed longingly at the link in the AdWords interface that reads “Create New Ad … Mobile Ad”.



So this week, I’m also going to be experimenting with Mobile Advertising, using Google AdWords.

It’s possible to create Mobile Ad’s in the form of Text ad’s and Image Ad’s.

Initial results have been a little confusing to be honest, because I don’t think Google Mobile Ad’s appear on an iPhone. In any case I’ll let you know how I get on next week. Please stay tuned…