Yesterday, Google announced a new feature in Adwords called Ad Sitelinks.

Here’s an excerpt from their blog:

Ad Sitelinks is a new AdWords feature that allows you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to content deep within your sites. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to 4 additional Destination URLs on your search-based text ad for users to choose from. By providing users with more options, you can create richer, more relevant ads that improve the value of your brand terms and other targeted keywords.

I haven’t had chance to try it out yet, however I can foresee some benefits and pitfalls.

Let’s start with the bad…

You’re setting these links on a campaign level (not adgroup), then Google’s algorithm calculates which 4 destination URL’s to serve for each ad on the fly. This means you’re giving up an element of control and trusting Google to do what’s best (is that best for them – or best for you?). Not sure if this is a good thing.

Now onto the good…

It looks like a great way of testing calls to action and intent.

Let’s take the ad above as an example. If the keyword that triggered the ad was “holidays” or something equally non-specific, after a few dozen clicks, you’ll a have a good idea of what people are really looking for when they search for that keyword. In this case you’ll analyse the most popular link out of the four options:  ‘Hotels’, ‘Rental Cars’, ‘Flights’ or ‘Vaction Packages’ and find a winner.

When you’ve found the most popular link of the four, you can write a new ad and landing page that’s a better matched to the searchers “itch” on this keyword.

I’m sure there’s a lot more of nifty things you can do with this new feature – I just can’t think of any yet.

So if you, dear reader, have any other ideas for Ad Sitelinks, let me know in the comments section.

Anyway, here’s how to activate them in your account:

1. Log into your account and select a campaign,

2. Click on the “Settings” tab, then scroll down to the “Networks, devices and extensions” area.

3. You should see a new option called “Ad extensions” like this:

4. Click “edit” and enter your multiple URL’s and ad text:

Give ‘em a try and let me know what you think!

-George.

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