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After an initial 11 city launch, small businesses around the country will soon be able to use a new promotional tool from Google to enhance their local advertising strategy. Google Tags enables small businesses to add a yellow tag to their listing on both Google.com and Google Maps to promote special offerings.
Searchers who scroll over the tag, or click on the sponsored link will be able to view coupons, photos, video, menu or other select features. In the image below you can see the coupon being offered by Village Massage in Houston, TX.
At just $25 a month, the new service is an affordable way for small businesses to enhance their marketing message and likely improve their click-through rate.
The tags will also appear in mobile web searches, serving as a great way to promote coupons or other instant savings.
Unfortunately, Google says the yellow tags won’t affect your search ranking; the tags are just a way to add more information to your listing. And searchers will be able to see which listings are sponsored.
The rollout will begin in states where tags are already available in select cities (California, Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Washington and Colorado). Listings will be updated as additional states go live.
As the service rolls out to more cities, it should be beneficial to those businesses that sign up right away, since a yellow tag advertising a coupon or other special deal will likely pique a searcher’s interest.
However, I wonder what the long term effect will be, once more businesses start implementing the tags on their listings. If a searcher sees too many yellow tags, will it just turn them off from choosing any of the companies? What do you think?
Gloria Grace Rand 
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