A tale of mapvertising pours forth after a coffee-cup icon is spotted on Google Local.It appears that Internet search provider Google is fooling around with mapvertising again, and is collaborating with bookseller Barnes and Noble, apparently, on the latest chapter of tests.
Internet marketer Shimon Sandler says he's noticed a new icon, in the shape of a coffee cup, on the maps accompanying results from Google Local, which is the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's local search and mapping feature.
Read more here about Google Local's debut.
Clicking on the coffee cup, Sandler wrote, triggers an ad for Barnes and Noble, complete with a logo, link, an address of a nearby outlet and a phone number.
Neither Google nor New York-based Barnes and Noble are saying what they are doing together.
But with this apparent test, and others Google's conducted in the last few months, it's clear the search firm is experimenting with paid advertising listings on maps. Under this kind of an arrangement, an advertiser pays to have the company's Web site or ad more prominently displayed.
Paid listings are very lucrative, and accompany some of Google's features, but not Google Maps.
Read more here about the mapping adventures of Google's competitors.
Taking into account the competitive nature of the Internet search market, it's also likely Google competitors Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Time Warner's AOL, and Microsoft's MSN are also tinkering with different kinds of ads on maps.
The last time Google was heard from on the mapvertising issue, it was using blue balloons, not coffee mugs.
The icon switch-out could have happened because people confused the blue balloons, denoting paid listings, from the red ones, suggesting the usual sampling Google gathers.
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