2009 has seen quite a few changes in the way in which search ads can be displayed and the information that can be augmented in search ads in Google. However many of the new additions are still being tested and many are still only available in the US. For this reason I thought it would be useful to discuss the recent additions in terms of what is available to us in the UK both live and in beta so you can take advantage of these new additions.
Live In The UK
In early November Google announced that Sitelinks are going live for search ads. Sitelinks allows advertisers to display 4 additional destination URLs rather than directing a user to a single landing page. At the moment the option of setting up Sitelinks is only open to advertisers whose ads meet a ‘high quality threshold’ however if proved successful Google may open it up to more advertisers eventually. To find out if you qualify for this new addition then you should see an option to set up Ad Sitelinks in the Campaign Settings tab of AdWords.
Announced in the end of July advertisers are able to add location extensions to their ads. You can set this up using Local Business Centre and once set up Google will dynamically set match your business location to a user’s location.
Video
I have yet to see these in the UK yet but apparently they are available to UK advertisers. The ability to display videos in with your text ad is good for advertisers in indusries such as cinemas and computer games stores to display trailers for recent films and games.
Currently In Beta in the UK
This has now gone live in the US but still appears to be in beta in the UK. Using your Google Merchant Account this new addition allows advertisers to highlight products directly in the search ads. With this new product extensions feature advertisers can show users the products from their site that are most relevant to a users query. At the moment in the UK this feature seems to be under testing and different variations seem to be appearing in the search results including product extensions with and without images.
Not Yet Available in the UK – Watch This Space!
Announced at the end of October, Google is currently testing a new feature in AdWords which allows users to compare multiple offers from sites easily. At this present time Comparison Ads are to show to only a small number of users in select U.S. states as well as being available to a limited number of advertisers in the mortgage/refinance industry however if successful it is almost certain to open up to other ecommerce stores before making its way to the UK.
More Dynamic Ads with Ad parameters
This is not so much of a change to the way in which ads are displayed however it is worth mentioning it because it was only announced this week. This new feature of the v2009 API which is called Ad Parameters allows advertisers to change numeric information such as prices dynamically within the your text ad. This is very useful for advertisers whose prices change regularly and want to display their latest price in an advert quickly. If successful this will be a welcome addition to the UK.
This just about wraps up the list. There may be other additions that I have missed however these are no doubt some of the more ground breaking changes. Hopefully if testing goes well in the US we will have many more features to play around with over here which can only be good!