Google Offers ‘Simple’ Ads for Small Businesses

Greg has a good post about Google’s New ‘Simple’ Ads for small businesses.

Google is finally coming around to the fact that their core Adwords product is too hard for small businesses and instead is now offering flat free pricing models that have typically been offered by Internet Yellow Page players.

If you are a small business, flat fee pricing on Google might be the best deal in town depending on your category and geographic service area. However, it’s going to be hard to tell without giving it a try for a while.

Google is slowly putting the pieces in place to consolidate the Internet yellow page market (maps, local business center, simple ads, etc.). If “simple ads” are a sign of things to come, Yellow Page players should be very concerned by this announcement.

However, IMHO, they are still missing a few important pieces of the Local puzzle:

• Business Profile page/web site creation
• Call tracking and reporting (can you say GoogleVoice for businesses?)
• A social consumer review strategy on par with Yelp
• Simple web analytics so that small businesses can track clicks/calls from IYP channels on thier dashboard

Watch this space closely.