Yesterday I discussed how Google is currently testing a new set of Home Services Ads within the SERP and the future of PPC. This is a major change in the market and to better understand this let me show you what the normal SERP would look like for “San Francisco plumber.”
The page has Local Google My Business listings, (that we are all familiar with here in South Africa (below the organic results), and a Google Maps link to the business locations in the upper right. Text ads appear at the top of the page and along the right column. Notice how organic results are dominated by Yelp. Here in South Africa we see how local directories such as Yellowpages, Brabys and YellowSA (recently started seeing listing from this site) win positions when compared to mom and pop sites.
Home Services Ads have a photo of the service professional, their location and phone number. If the professional has any ratings then these will also be displayed. Details about qualifications and service quality and offers such as 24/7 services and free quotes are displayed as callout extensions. Users can click the profile to get more details. As mentioned these are not yet in our territory and the screenshots in this post where taken from Ginny’s post. The following screenshot break down the user journey
A User searches for a service provider on Google and sees Ads
The user clicks on an Individual Listing – in this case ATP Plumbing or more to get an array of service professionals.
The users gets access to a Lead Form and can either contact a single service provider directly or request up to 3 quotes from other providers:
Once you submit the request, Google sends it to each professional, and Google’s role in the referral process ends until a job is completed. Once a job is finished, Google will email you a ratings and review request.
There is a lot of confusion, excitement, dissatisfaction, and distrust in the community about this new platform. This follows on on Car Insurance Compare Ads and Home Loan Compare Ads launched in the US and UK earlier in March this year.
