Extended Text Ads

What do extended text ads mean to you?

I have a confession. I love writing search ads. As a recovered copywriter, I’m smitten by the challenge of communicating well in a 25-character headline followed by two 30-character descriptions lines. The satisfaction of writing a good one that’s measurably better than its predecessors has never diminished for me.

Years ago, a study showed that organic search results with longer title tags (which appear as blue and bolded hyperlinks) receive more clicks than those with shorter ones. At the time I wondered when Google would use this data to change the parameters of its paid ad copy. Wonder no more!

Now With 2 Headlines – 
Get More Clicks With Your Extended Headline!

On July 26, Google announced it is changing the character counts allowed in its ads to two 30-character headlines and one 80-character line of descriptive text.

Courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com

What’s Good for the PPC Goose….

Clearly if Google’s making this change it’s good for Google, which means clickthrough rates are higher, which means more clicks, which means more money. But to Google’s credit, just because it’s good for Google doesn’t make it bad for advertisers. On the contrary, as an advertiser you want more clicks on your ads too.

When will your AdWords ads be updated?

As of October 26, you won’t be able to create the old-school ads anymore. For Search Warrant paid search advertising clients, we’re tackling your ad copy using the good old 80/20 rule to update your highest-performing ads first and then following up with the rest.

For more detail on the change, see what SearchEngineLand.com has to say. And if you have a question, I’m happy to take a break from furious copywriting to chat it out with you.