Google has introduced a new look to its AdWords Sitelinks by adding a small arrow on the left side of where the sitelinks begin.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that these new sitelinks are currently rolling out everywhere this week.
The screen shot below shows both the old and new look of Google Sitelinks.
Google Sitelinks appear with your ad on Google.com, and in some cases across the Google Display Network. Adding sitelinks is free, although you are still charged per click on your ad. They give potential customers more reasons to click on your ad by including additional information within your paid search ad.
Google has expanded ad extensions with Social extensions, Dynamic search ads, location extensions, product extensions, call extensions and seller ratings. In addition, Google may be introducing additional Ad Extensions in the future.
To enable Sitelinks in your Google AdWords ads, click on the “Ad Extensions” tab within your Campaigns tab.
In the world of Google search ads, advertisers know the drill. Twenty-five characters for a headline, and thirty-five characters for description lines 1 and 2, as well as the display url. It seems like a very limited amount of space for a company to get their message across, until now. Google has recently opened up Ad Sitelinks to all advertisers.
According to Google, “Ad Sitelinks allow you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your sitemap.” Ad Sitelinks give companies the power to share more about their business and what it has to offer. In the examples below, 1-800-Flowers is able to show searchers that they offer birthday flowers & gifts, gift baskets and even Martha Stewart flowers & gifts. These are all options that might not have been promoted without Ad Sitelinks.
There are two format options for Ad Sitelinks. There is a one line format and a two line format. Google determines how your sitelinks will appear based on ad relevancy and other factors. Let’s take a look at how site links show with a search ad. Example 1 shows a one line format and Example 2 shows a two line format.
Example 1:
Example 2:
In both examples the Ad Sitelinks appear in blue below the paid search ad. Keep in mind advertisers have to rank between positions 1-3 and be in the light peach colored box above the organic listings in order for Ad Sitelinks to be eligible to show.
Ad Sitelinks empowers advertisers to set themselves apart from the competition by letting them present more services and options to searchers within a search ad. Plus, it gives more real estate on the page and most advertisers will gladly take it.
Google’s Ad Sitelinks can help boost your campaign’s performance! Sonya Wood’s blog post last Friday talked about the beta program Google AdWords has rolled out, called Ad Sitelinks. With initial tests running on a handful of our clients’ campaigns, early numbers are showing promising results.
The most significant impact in AdWords stats has been on click through rate and conversion rate. The chart below taken from the Account Snapshot section of AdWords compares November 9 — November 15 when Ad Sitelinks was in place, to the prior date range when additional links were not being used. While the click through rate (CTR) for this client’s entire campaign portfolio dipped slightly, the campaign utilizing Sitelinks in the ad copy showed an increase over 66%.
Figure A. All Online Campaigns
Another notable metric that has been impacted is the conversion rate. Please note the company being featured in this post is an ecommerce website that has historically seen increasing conversion rates throughout the month of November and December. This is evidenced by Figure A above where we see a 68% lift in conversion rate for the portfolio of campaigns under this account. This increase was significantly higher for our test campaign utilizing Ad Sitelinks — a stellar 80% lift!
Figure B. Ad Sitelinks Campaign
Beyond AdWords, we have seen additional positive impact in site usage through Google Analytics. By providing multiple entry points to the website we have been able to drastically decrease the bounce rate for this campaign — by 49%! Based on the strong preliminary results yielded by implementing Sitelinks on a single campaign, we have since implemented the option on a number of campaigns within this client’s account. If your AdWords account has been white listed for this beta opportunity, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of it.
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