When introducing new promoted places ads in Maps earlier last year, Google noted that local searches are being made faster than overall mobile searches. Also, it saw that mobile searches were both than desktop searches. This is why the search engine has been ramping up efforts to monetize all local mobile searches since then. It has come up with new kind of Google ads on local search, along with features like LIA data in Maps and Knowledge Panels with inventory search capabilities, showing in Local Finder, and including ads in Local Pack. All these ads seem to appear primarily on mobile results, while limited testing being seen on desktop results. Looking at all of these changes, a survey was done.
This survey considered 110 keywords across 100 major US cities, making it a total of 11,000 SERPs. These keywords belong to 11 major categories that were the most popular and most competitive in those large cities. These categories included apparel, medical, hospitality, fitness, finance, insurance, legal, automotive, consumer goods, services (home), and services (other). All of these terms would definitely have local pack results, which is why they were selected. So, here are the results that showed up out of the survey.