Wow it sounds like one of those awful used car radio commercials, doesn’t it? No credit – no problem. No money down – buy now, pay later!!! Well not exactly but you get the drift…

Have you ever had this problem?

AdWords advertisers know that online advertising is an effective way to promote their businesses. What do you do, however, if you want to advertise online, but you don’t have a website? Does this sound familiar? Now we can help.

For just three easy payments of $19.99

Hosted business pages, a new feature for AdWords Starter Edition, will let you do just that. A hosted business page is an informational webpage that new advertisers can create when they sign up for AdWords Starter Edition. You can use a hosted business page to tell people more about your business when they click on your ad.

On the Inside Adwords blog Google announced the launch of Google hosted business pages. So what is it? It’s a new product for US advertisers that are using AdWords Starter Edition. It is basically a hosted landing page for your business. One important distinction – it is not a full-featured website with its own domain name, but rather a single landing page for your AdWords ads.

Here’s the example Google gives:

Their blog post is interesting because it’s written as if its aimed at existing AdWords customers but why would someone be advertising with AdWords if they didn’t a) have a website already b) have at least a landing page on something like citysearch.

They clear this up a little towards the end:

If you’re already an AdWords advertiser, perhaps you’d like to tell your favorite local restaurant owner that they can now advertise online, even if they don’t have a website. Just watch out for the crowds of new customers.

It’s definitely a product aimed at small restaurants, local delis and the like. Some suggestions:

• Refer someone and get a $25 AdWords credit
• Change the wording on your Small & Local Business Advertising page from “All you need: a website and a credit card” to “All you need: a credit card”
  

It’s really easy to get setup – here’s a quick overview:

Start here and choose Starter Edition and the radio button indicating you don’t have a website:

You will then see a little overview explaining how AdWords acts (yes there are still some people who don’t know – I guess the same ones that don’t have a website – hence the overview):

Next – you fill out a form and choose the layout that you want (make sure your image is below 500k):

Once you have gone through this page – you can see a preview of how your page is going to look in a pop-up. It’s a simple page that surely isn’t going to win any Webbys but will give your info to interested people:

That’s it – your webpage is finished:

The URL in your ad will now be displayed as biz.googlepages.com/business-name. When you login to your account now you will see a link called My Webpage.

A couple of questions:

• Will businesses be able to use this for non-AdWords related purposes? For example – can they use it to send people to for information (such as on business cards, menus, etc) or is it just to be used for AdWords?
• Will this entice businesses onto the web and whet their appetite (meaning they will want to upgrade to a full fledged website) or will this be enough – for now?

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