Greg Sterling posted yesterday about Ads Entering the Google ‘7-Pack’. These ads are actually called Enhanced Listings that Google is now featuring in the map pack.  This was also noted on Mike Blumenthal’s blog post titled Google’s “Enhanced Listings” for Local earlier today.

You will notice that the Golf Club at Boulder Ridge is highlighting photos.  This is just one of the many options that Google allows you to choose to highlight.

Google says that you can use any of the following enhancements to jazz up your listing.

• Website for your business.
• Photos of your business.
• Videos of your business.
• Coupons for your listing.
• Menu for your restaurant.
• Reservations page for your business.
• Driving directions to your business.

“The enhancement types you can select depend on what information you already have available in your business listing. If you want to highlight a video, for example, you’ll first need to add a video to your business listing. Once you’ve done that, the option will show up in the menu for your enhancement types.”

There is a $25 monthly fee that gets paid to Google to create an enhanced listing for your local company.  There are no bids or keywords to optimize for either.

The Burlison Law Firm chose to highlight some of their videos, in order to persuade the viewer to click the link.

Not only does your listing get highlight next to where you appear in the maps, but you also get a nice icon to accompany the map its self.  This should improve the click through rate of your listing since it is a way to separate your map listing from your competition’s.