If you are currently managing your organization’s paid search campaigns on Google, you may or may not be familiar with the latest and greatest improvements made recently to encourage visitors to click on your ads and continue on to your site or landing pages. If you’re not familiar with the changes, here is a quick explanation of some of the new features, called Ad Extensions.
First off is your Location Extension. A location extension pulls in and displays a local business addresses that is associated with an account when your ad is shown, in order to make your ads more relevant. You can manually add an address in the Settings section, or associate it with your Google Places account. Location extensions are by default set at the Campaign level, but can also be set at the Ad level if you have, for example, specific promotions running at certain locations. Below is an example of a location extension.
Google Location Extensions
Next, and most recent, is a Phone Extension. This is where you can associate a phone number with an ad that allows a visitor the ability to click to call right from the ad. These phone numbers are displayed on computer or mobile devices with full Internet browsers. These are great for businesses, like attorneys, that rely heavily on phone calls for lead generation.
The last extension is the Product Extension. This is most relevant to ecommerce sites and business that have products listed on their site. You first need to create and upload your products to a Google Merchant Center account, and then you can link the two. Your ads will then display your products underneath them if you are listed in the top bid position. Below is an example of how Skechers uses product extentions.
