Looking for the right ads extension, but not quite sure which ones to use? Skip the trial and error method and take a look at our easy to understand visual guide of Google ads extensions that will help you pick just the right ones for you and your business!
What is an Ad Extension?
Ad extensions are extra bits of information related to your business that can be added to your ads, this can be information like your telephone number or a link to a specific page of your website.
Sitelinks, which was rolled out in 2009, was the very first of these Google ads extensions, which meant that Google users wanting to advertise their products and services, were now able to increase the size of their text ads while also being able to add extra links to their websites.
Over the past decade, Google has gone on to roll-out another 10 manual and automated extensions as well as 2 automated-only extensions. What does that mean exactly?
Well, with the manual extensions, you’ll have to set it up in Google ads before it’ll show in your actual ad, as for automated extensions, you won’t personally need to do this. Google Ads looks at system predictions of performance and according to that, it will set it up for you.
Why do search ads extensions matter?
According to Google’s data, just by using ads extensions you can increase your CTR by 15%, if not more. The reasoning behind this is that ads with ads extensions are larger, more visible, and therefore receive more clicks, so when it comes to ads on Google, bigger is always better.
On the left is what an ad preview looks like in Google’s desktop ad editor, it’s much smaller and less appealing to read than the ad on the right which is more information-dense.
Top 4 Google ads extensions
Not all ads extensions are created equal, so you’ll need to find the ones that suit your business’ individual needs. However, there are some ads extensions that are suitable for almost any business and should definitely be used to create larger ads that get higher CRTs.
These are the top 4 ads extensions for your business:
- Sitelinks
The first of these are sitelinks which are a great way of placing more links on your ads and getting people to specific parts of your website. For each link, there’s a limit of 25 characters in the link text and a limit of 140 characters for a 2-line description.
Google usually picks 2-6 sitelinks per ad, Google also decides which ones get chosen to be displayed, which is the case for most ads extensions.
- Callout extensions
Callout extensions are 25 character snippets which are really useful in getting your business’ best selling points out there. It lets you keep it short and sweet while projecting a sense of authenticity.
Once again, Google will select between 2 and 6 callouts per ad and this is largely according to relevancy or the likelihood of it being clicked on.
- Call extensions
With call extensions, you can attach your business’ number onto your ad, which means you’ll now have a separate, clickable number available to your clients and customers that saves them from having to go to your landing page to contact you.
Also important to note: your ad could get rejected if the body includes a phone number, so call extensions are definitely the way to go.
- Structured snippets
Last but not least, we have structured snippets. A structured snippet is a list of products or services that help people get a much more detailed idea of what it is your business does.
There are 13 types of structured snippets, some of which are very specific to certain types of businesses only.
Those are the top 4 ads extensions that are useful for pretty much any business wanting to keep things simple and effective. You can easily create your extensions in the Google Ads interface or you could choose to make use of the Google Ads editor.
