A while back I wrote about the various ad-extensions available in Google AdWords. On Valentine’s Day they gave advertisers a present: Enhanced Ad Sitelinks.
So what is this?
It works by taking the text from ads that are within your entire AdWords account related to your sitelinks setup at the campaign level. It will enhance existing sitelinks with additional information that’s already in your account adcopy. Note that this is done automatically by Google and not an option you can select during setup. Here is a great example, complements of Google Help:
Say you’ve created sitelinks for your pizza restaurant campaign, and your ad displays sitelinks as shown here:
Now, let’s say your account also includes the following text ads:
With this enhancement, your ad could now look like this:
What are the criteria for Enhanced Sitelinks to show?
If the following conditions are met, you may see Enhanced Sitelinks in your ad:
• Your ads are running in the U.S.
• You have sitelinks
• Your ad is a top ad
• Your ad’s sitelinks share landing pages with other ads in the same account
What determines whether enhanced, two or three line sitelinks show?
Google’s system will always try to serve an ad with as many Sitelinks as possible. Their system will try and serve Enhanced Sitelinks, being the most advanced format, but as such the format has the highest quality threshold. If the ad doesn’t meet the quality threshold for Enhanced Sitelinks, then the system will attempt to serve three or two line sitelinks.
Does Quality Score impact whether or not the extension is shown?
Yes, as with all sitelinks, ad quality directly impacts whether or not (and which version of) the extension is served. This is because Google shows Enhanced, two line and three line sitelinks for only very high quality ads (top slot placement required). In fact, enhanced, two line and three line sitelinks are typically triggered by brand terms because they tend to be higher quality.
Can we view whether or not Enhanced Sitelinks vs. other sitelinks are served?
Standard Sitelink reporting in the UI will provide insight into whether or not a Sitelink was served, but format-based sitelink reporting is currently not available. In other words, you won’t be able to differentiate between an impr/click on 2-line v. 3-line v. enhanced.
Does Enhanced Sitelinks take into account all ads in the account?
Yes, but AdWords will respect campaign settings. Additionally, AdWords will check to make sure that the language and country targeting is the same among the sitelinks being enhanced.
How does Enhanced Sitelinks determine which ad to pair with which sitelink?
They are enhancing sitelinks with information advertisers provided elsewhere in your AdWords account. For instance, if your account has a text ad that has the same destination URL as your sitelink, we may use text from that ad to enhance your sitelink. In other words, if you have a sitelink that directs to example.com/redsneakers, Google may enhance the sitelink with text from an ad in the same account that also directs to example.com/redsneakers.
How well do Enhanced Sitelinks perform?
No external numbers to share yet, but anecdotally advertisers are seeing significantly higher CTRs with Enhanced Sitelinks when compared to the same ad with traditional two or three line sitelinks.