JASON COWIE, the owner of Kingpinz Skateboard and Snowboard Shop in Houston, has done a pretty good job of getting his business noticed on the Web. Just type skateboards in Houston on a search engine, and his store will be among the first listed. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Scott Dalton for The New York Times
Jason Cowie used to spend four figures on Google ads for his skateboard shop. Now, for $25 a month, Google highlights his shop in search results.
But one of his sure-fire ways to drive Web visitors and foot traffic buying search ads on Google got to be pretty expensive. Mr. Cowie, whose shop is just 1,000 square feet, found himself bidding for placement against deep-pocketed national chains, and having to spend $1,500 to $2,000 a month just to keep up.
Now Mr. Cowie is trying something new: for a flat fee of $25 a month, he is making his listings on Google stand out. Whenever his shop comes up in a search page or on a Google map, it is adorned with a bright yellow tag. The tag links to the Kingpinz Web site, but these enhanced listings, as the ads are called, can also link to a coupon, store directions, a photograph or a video of a business, or, in the case of a restaurant, a menu or reservations page.
Yellow may be an appropriate color for the tag. Googles new enhanced business listings, which it started to test quietly in Houston and San Jose, Calif., early this month, have an obvious competitor: the Yellow Pages.
I think Google is going to be the new Yellow Pages, Mr. Cowie said. More and more of these younger kids are used to Google. They are looking at their phones rather than opening up a phone book.
Whether the stout ad-packed books that land on the doorsteps and driveways of millions of American homes are an endangered species is far from certain. But Googles renewed attempt to court small businesses underscores one of the perennial challenges of Web advertising. Small businesses make up a majority of businesses in America but account for only a small fraction of online advertising dollars.
Indeed, advertising from mom-and-pop businesses like dry cleaners, hair salons and cafes is a $29 billion market, according to BIA/Kelsey, a company in Chantilly, Va., that researches local business advertising.
Since the early days of the Internet, Web companies have had their eyes on that potentially lucrative market, but their efforts have met with limited success. Individual local businesses are hard to reach at scale, said Jennifer Dulski, the chief executive of Centerd, an online company that helps users finds local businesses online. The only people who have been successful at capturing local businesses have had massive sales forces, like publishers of phone book directories, said Ms. Dulski, who was an executive at Yahoo in charge of local content and advertising.
Negley Norton, president of the Yellow Pages Association, a group representing Yellow Pages publishers, said 10 percent of the industrys $13 billion in annual revenue comes from the Internet. He said Google is a partner as well as a competitor, as many Yellow Pages companies help small businesses with their online marketing on Google and other sites. Despite the growth of Internet marketing, he said use of print Yellow Pages remained strong.
Print books are going to be around for a long, long time, Mr. Norton said.
The success of Yelp, the popular site for reviews of local businesses, which Google tried to buy last year, and advances by companies like Citysearch suggest that a growing percentage of small businesses is finally moving ad dollars to the Web.
But Googles auction-driven search advertising system, AdWords, has confounded many small businesses. So Google tried a new course. We are acknowledging that AdWords is really complex for small-business owners, said John Hanke, a vice president of product management for Google.
Google has been laying the groundwork to get into the local ad market since at least 2005, when it opened its local business center, a directory of businesses whose listings show up in Web searches or maps. Google lets owners post their listings free, allowing them to add information like hours of operation, phone number, address and directions. Google says that more than one million businesses are listed in its local business center.
Last year, the company released a simple tool that allowed business owners to see how often their listings were viewed or clicked, a hint of how Web traffic might drive customers to physical stores.
Now, Google is ready to cash in on its investment, offering businesses enhanced listings at a small-business-friendly price. Other companies have offered similar flat-fee ads, but none with the heft of Google.
The thing that is different about this is that its Google, and Googles reach and visibility is so much greater than anyone else, said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Opus Research in San Francisco. Mr. Sterling said that the Yellow Pages industry has 3.2 million to 3.5 million advertisers. He predicts that Google could reach one million to two million.
Of course, its too early to say whether Googles approach will catch on. But its simplicity has appealed to a pair of Web novices. Suzanne and Neil Grover, who have owned a wholesale jewelry business in Houston for 35 years, recently decided to shift into retail. Just this month, their company, Inter-continental Jewelers opened its Web site, and they immediately bought an enhanced listing from Google.
I found it pretty easy, Ms. Grover said. Whats more, she said, the price was right: It is almost free, so of course I am going to stick with it.
