Google Adwords New Expanded Ads – What is the Difference?

On this month’s marketing update I want talk to you about Google AdWords. Google AdWords has recently made a lot of changes to the AdWords platform and to the kind of results that you will see in searches. I’m going to share my screen with you here so that we can look at some different options. One of the first things that they did recently was actually move all the right-side ads. Before, whenever you did a search in Google you would always get ad results on the top and also on the right, but as you can see that’s no longer happening.

If you do a search for plumbers in Broomfield, Colorado you will see the ads that come up. Four ads that will show up most of the time. Before, you only used to have three and then you had all the ads on the right. Now there are four ads there. And if it’s a local search you also get the Google Maps; what we call a local 3-pack. There used to be seven businesses listed, but now it’s only three. Just a note on this, the biggest impact I’m getting in here is your reviews. As you can see, 47 reviews, 38 reviews, 5 reviews, 4.7 overall, 4.6, 4.2. That’s a great example of how much impact your reviews can have on your listings.

The other thing about these ads is that the ads have changed dramatically. It looks like a lot of these have made their updates to their ads. For 15 years, Google AdWords has been set a very specific way for the number of characters in the ad. This is what this ad looked like before, but by being able to add more text to it, now it looks like this. You get a much better URL, your website address, so you can do more with it. You’ve got two 30-character headlines which lets you build out much better headlines, and instead of a total of 70 characters for your description, you have 80 characters for your description. Overall, with everything that they’ve done, it’s more than a 40% increase in the amount of text that you’re able to add to an ad.

If we run AdWords for you, we’ve already updated these ads and added the new expanded ads. We’re keeping the old ones as long as they’ll let us keep those, but we’ve added totally brand new ones as well. That’s what you’re seeing now in search results. Just so you know, all the ads on the right are gone, you’re going to get three to four ads here, and depending on your search and type of search and competition and all that this is going to vary on one, two, three, or four text ads. If it’s local search, you’re only going to see three businesses listed in that, and the biggest impact that I see is the number and quality of your reviews. Next time you’re searching, check that out.