Andy Taylor, ahead of the 2017 holiday season, had written a column that detailed how much more important locally focused ads had become during the 2016 holiday shopping season. This had been known as Local Inventory As and ads on Google Maps. Andy found that, after analyzing last year’s data, searchers became increasingly likely to search for both brand and non-brand keywords within Google Maps as the number of days before Christmas became shorter and shorter, and the share of traffic coming from ads featured in Google Maps likewise rose.
By taking a look at the most recent holiday period, we find that searchers once again tuned to navigational apps in the days leading up to Christmas day to find store information for last-minute purchases. Because of this, it was the highest one-day share of traffic ever coming from Google Maps ads.