This is not going to be a long post, just a “topical” post related to current Tiger Woods troubles and his sponsorhips.

Tiger Woods chose TLC…but he still hit the tree.

Tiger Woods chose TLC…but he’s made a bunch of bad decisions lately.

Maybe it’s time to find a better sales angle.

“I’m just sayin’” maybe you should update the title of your Ads, or better yet, let us all know what the CTR is 30 days before and 30 days after d-day for Tiger.

I have noticed over the last week that my searches in St Louis Missouri are yielding some paid results with the blue marker that is the new Local Listing Ads that are being tested in San Diego and San Francisco.

The icon is appearing next to the paid result and NOT where it does on the paid Local Listing Ads in SD and SF

This is the BETA in SD California:

and this is what I have been seeing in St Louis. Notice the phone number is also displayed. Click the image for a full-size view.

Close up shot:

Another example:

and one more for event planning 

I also have found it in Chicago (click for larger image):

I have not determined why this these are being selected for the blue marker. I am very interested to find out. I have also not seen the option in AdWords.

I would love to see data on CTR with the new blue icon. I wonder if any of these advertisers are getting that data in their adwords account? I will attempt to contact one and see if they even know.

Does this effect the Quality Score in any way? Advice often given is to not include a phone number in your Ad copy. I realize this is NOT in the Ad copy, but it will affect CTR.

They are giving the person performing the search a way to contact this advertiser without clicking, which in turn saves the advertiser money, however, it might also make the advertiser think their Adwords is not working because nobody is clicking on the Ad. The phone number is not a unique tracking number, it is simply the advertisers real phone number.

I think having a phone number will skew the data for their Adwords account significantly.

thoughts?