This year, Google Adwords created new expanded text ads to improve their relevance, going from 3 to 4 ads in the top area of the Google search results and removing the ads on the right-hand side, giving more importance to the ones at the top.
The most important thing is that expanded text ads can only be created starting October 26th in all Adwords accounts, appearing alongside standard text ads, so it’s necessary to start replacing the traditional ones with the new ones in all Search Network campaigns if you want them to appear next year.
According to Google, as of January 31, 2017, it will no longer be possible to create or edit standard text ads in Adwords, making it mandatory to create them all in expanded format.
What are expanded text ads?
These are ads on Google that have the following elements:
– A URL or destination address for the ad.
– Two headlines of 30 characters each.
– Two optional path fields that appear in the ad’s visible URL
– A description of up to 80 characters, as shown in the image.
The main advantage compared to the previous ones is that they’ve been expanded to offer more space in the headline and description which lets us include more useful information or a call to action, as Google recommends.
They’ve also been designed to display on mobile devices and are available for both the Search Network and the Display Network, and they’re compatible with ad extensions that make them more relevant and help achieve a better position on Google while paying a lower cost per click (CPC).
We can create them both with the traditional Google Adwords interface and with Adwords Editor from version 11.5
Visible URL of the expanded text ad
Adwords now takes the final URL as the ad’s visible URL and can show two optional path fields that are added after the domain, like this: www.ejemplo.com/zapatos/nike which tells us about the location of the website we’re going to access and should be related to the content of the ad’s landing page, as shown in the image.
The path text doesn’t need to match the final destination URL.
Conclusion on expanded ads
Our advice is that if you have SEO campaigns running on Google Adwords Search Network, you should start updating them now to gain relevance and visibility, helping you get more visits that help you win more customers online by taking advantage of the new character limits.
These ads will also be shown on mobile devices and there’s no need to mark them for mobile devices
They also let you increase or decrease the bid or cost per click (CPC) depending on the device the search is performed from, allowing you to improve campaign ROI based on recorded conversions.
What did you think of the new expanded text ads? We’ll see you in the comments.