NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Marissa Mayer has been at Google for almost 12 years and at the helm of search products for just about as long. So why is she an influencer? Because a couple of months ago, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt decided to take her off search and put her on local. That's how good she is.

"Local and location services" is a natural progression for Ms. Mayer's career since it's the combination of search technology and targeted advertising that will take Google to the next level of advertising revenue, if Ms. Mayer can make it work. There's no shortage of hyperbole about the total dollar amount waiting to be scooped up in the local ad market -- some go as high as $200 billion -- and Ms. Mayer's reputation of delivering results make her the right woman for the job. Groupon's recent rejection of Google's $6 billion purchase offer only makes her new job more interesting.

During her decade at search, Ms. Mayer introduced 100 features to the site and released it in 100 languages. Most recently, Ms. Mayer brought to market Google Instant, the "results before you search" product that was amazingly engineered, but has also gotten some flack for its censorship of some topics and words in an attempt on Google's part to "protects its users from pornography, hate speech and violence."

As the first woman engineer at Google, starting in 1999, Ms. Mayer has proved what she can do with ads when people are searching for something. Let's see what she can do with "Local and Location" once they get there.