When writing a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad, you have to be succinct. You have character limitations to work around and the lack of imagery associated with the ad creates the need to be even more compelling in your copy. With the introduction of Google ad extensions, there are new ways expand upon a standard text ad.
The purpose of this blog is to provide a basic outline for when to use which extension. You can easily track the performance by clicking on the “Ad Extensions” tab in your account. Google breaks down the performance of ad extensions so that you can see the traffic and the cause and effect of the add-ons.
Here are the 4 types of extensions:
Location Extension
Purpose: Provide the physical address and a phone number of a location. You can add multiple locations and the one closest to the searcher will appear.
Good For: Retail locations, Hotels, Attractions, Hospital locations.
Example: If you are a used music store in Nashville and someone is searching “used music” in Nashville, they will see your ad and notice how close you are, making them more likely to visit your store.
Keep in mind: Your ads won’t always be shown with the location extension. Certain sites across the display network and certain search partners don’t show the extensions. On mobile phones with full internet capabilities, the extensions will show up as an expansion with a map.
Phone Extension
Purpose: Allow mobile phone users to simply click the phone number to call.
Good For: Bookings, Sales, Customer Service
Example: If you are a hotel property advertising a limited time offer that can only be booked over the phone, this is a great solution!
Keep in mind: You do pay for the click.
Christa Booker wrote a previous blog post on this topic, read it here.
Ad Sitelinks
Purpose: Provide up to 10 additional links to your site.
Good For: Driving traffic to pages beyond the home page - useful to promote limited time offers or seasonal links
Example: If you are a sewing machine manufacturer and someone searches “new sewing machines” you could source links to the following categories: Embroidery Machines, Sewing Machines, Overlock Machines, Deals, etc.
Keep in mind: If your goal is lead generation, your best bet is to funnel traffic to a custom landing page rather than sourcing different links into your site.
Product Extension
Purpose: Showcase relevant product details including pricing and images.
Good For: eCommerce sites
Example: If you are Nike and someone searches for “running shoes”, when your ad appears, there will be a “plusbox” that says “Show products from Nike for running shoes”
Keep in mind: You need to have a Google Merchant Center to take advantage of this capability. Additionally, product extensions won’t appear on the display network or on search partner sites. This is the newest and most complicated extension to implement.
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