The ability to call a business is often critical in helping potential customers complete a purchase. In fact, 61% of mobile searchers say it's extremely important to be able to call a business during the purchase phase of the shopping process.¹ Measuring these phone calls to your business is essential for understanding the full value of Google search ads and making informed decisions for acquiring new customers. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of Google forwarding numbers in Canada.

A "Call" button in a search ad on a mobile device

Canada, say hello to Google forwarding numbers

Google forwarding numbers are an important step toward measuring the phone calls you receive through Google search ads. When you use Google forwarding numbers with your call extensions and call-only campaigns, we’ll dynamically assign a unique phone number to your ad. When a customer calls that number, AdWords will route the call to your business phone number while providing you with useful information about the caller’s area code, call duration, and whether the call was answered.

Many people who search for local businesses prefer to call a phone number with a recognizable area code, which is why Google forwarding numbers will show a local Google forwarding number, where available. For example, if your business is based in Vancouver, your ads are eligible to use a “604” area code with your Google forwarding number.

Canadian advertisers like belairdirect and 1-800-Got-Junk are already using Google forwarding numbers to improve performance on their call ads:

"As marketers, we are always looking for new ways to leverage technology in order to be more efficient and measure the full value of our ad campaigns. Now, with Google forwarding numbers, we're able to gain valuable insights into the consumer behavior behind calls to make our campaigns and call centers more useful for current and future customers. Furthermore, we've identified that calls that last over 10 minutes are more likely to result in someone signing up for an insurance policy. We can now count these as call conversions to optimize for higher-quality calls." Anne Fortin, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategic Relationships, belairdirect

“Call extensions and call-only campaigns help customers reach our service representatives more quickly to schedule a junk pick-up. So far, we’ve been able to generate thousands of leads and now with insights from Google forwarding numbers in Canada, we can monitor call details and filter calls by duration. This gives us vital information on which campaigns are driving the right calls and how we can better invest our advertising spend." Keegan Morrison, PPC Account Manager, 1-800-Got-Junk

Clicks that lead to calls from your website

While call extensions and call-only ads are very effective, many customers also call your business after clicking through a Google ad and learning more about the products and services you offer on your website. Website call conversions is a powerful tool that dynamically inserts a Google forwarding number on your website to identify and measure the calls that occur after a Google ad click. When someone clicks on your website’s phone number or dials it directly from their phone, you can attribute the call and call value back to the keyword and ad that drove the customer.

Advertisers like Blinds.com are already using website call conversions to gain a more holistic picture of their AdWords performance:

“It’s a great idea to implement Google’s website call conversions, particularly if you have a call center that handles over 15% of sales or if you’re faced with the challenge of attributing offline calls to online spend. With website call conversions, we’ve attributed 56% more revenue to mobile ads and measured 173% higher average order value. With these insights, we’ve been able to increase and optimize spend towards keywords that are generating the most call conversions. We’re looking forward to rolling this out to Blinds.ca in Canada.” Michael Nicholas, SEM Specialist

Maximize call value

In addition to measuring call conversions, Google forwarding numbers also allow you to assign a conversion value. For example, a business might assign a revenue value to calls that last over 5 minutes. By measuring these calls, you can automatically optimize your keyword bids to drive more valuable calls using Target ROAS. This flexible bid strategy factors in signals like device, location, and time of day to make auction-time bid adjustments that maximize call conversion value, while reaching your business goals.

Learn more

With the launch of Google forwarding numbers, you can now report on call metrics and conversions, measure website call conversions, and optimize your bids to drive more valuable phone calls. You can learn more about each of these products in the AdWords Help Center and read our best practices for maximizing performance with calls.

Posted by Amit Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords

Earlier this year, we introduced dynamic structured snippets. This automated ad extension gives your customers a better sense of the content on your website before they click on your ad. Whether it’s highlighting a list of hotel amenities or top clothing brands, dynamic structured snippets make your search ads more relevant and helpful while saving you time and simplifying campaign management.

Over the past few months, many of you have been seeing tremendous success with dynamic structured snippets. And we’ve heard that you sometimes want to customize the information that shows in this format. That’s why today we’re starting to roll out structured snippet extensions: advertiser-provided structured information that show with your text ads.
From amenities to brands to product types, you’ll now be able to select a predefined “Header” and input a list of customized values that make the most sense for your business. For example, if you’re a hotel brand promoting hotel property, you can now create a structured snippet for “Amenities” and order them accordingly.
Using structured snippets with callouts

Structure snippets and callouts have distinct attributes and benefits.
Learn more

Structured snippets will be rolling out to all AdWords accounts over the coming weeks. Please note that structured snippets can only be created in English at this time.

Ad extensions typically boost the performance of an ad and are also a factor in Ad Rank. Though ad extensions aren’t always eligible to show, the more you provide, the better the auction is at selecting the best combination of extensions to improve performance.

For more information about setting up structured snippets, see the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Senthil Hariramasamy, Product Manager, AdWords

Now more than ever, people search online to find things nearby. In fact, Google search interest in "near me" has doubled since last year,¹ with 80% coming from mobile.² In these moments, consumers have heightened expectations for immediacy and relevance — 4 out of 5 say they want search ads to be customized to their city, zip code or immediate surroundings.³ That’s why we continue to develop richer local ad formats that deliver more relevant information based on what someone searches for.

“Where’s the nearest location?”
Last year we enhanced location extensions to show up to three different locations for a business in a single ad unit. This improvement offers consumers the flexibility to choose which of your locations is most convenient for them.

“What businesses are near me?”
Starting today, we’ll show three or four different businesses for location-related searches like “nearby auto repair.” Each ad unit will feature click-to-call and directions right at people’s fingertips. This new format organizes the information that your on-the-go customers need so they can easily compare options and take action, like calling your business or visiting your store.
If you have location extensions enabled in your account, you’ll be eligible to show these new mobile ad formats.

The wonderful world of extensions
With a world of information at their fingertips, consumers want what they want, right when they want it, so it’s essential that ads are fine-tuned to be relevant to people's contexts.  In addition to location extensions, there are many types of extensions in AdWords that can make your ads more useful and engaging — and they deliver, on average, a 10% increase in click-through-rate.⁴  Showing more than one extension on an ad tends to see even higher engagement than that.

Search ads can trigger up to four extensions at the same time. This means your ad can show when and where a product is available at a nearby store, or show an app extension for someone on her mobile device. Here are some tips for best ways to use extensions for your business:

• Sitelinks Try to enable at least six sitelinks for both desktop and mobile users.  Briefer sitelinks are generally the most effective, so try to keep them short and crisp.
• Callouts Like sitelinks, you’ll want to keep these short.  They’re best used with specific and concrete information, like sizes or rates.
• Reviews As long as you’re quoting or paraphrasing from a reputable third-party source, you can apply one review to your entire account.  These are possibly the fastest extensions to put into place.

The specific extensions that are displayed in each auction are a function of previous performance, user context and available space on the page, among other factors  Enable whatever makes sense for your customers and the AdWords system will decide the best combination of those options to maximize the value you get from your extensions.

Ad extensions done right
For Accor Hotels, a strong combination of extensions led to a 14% increase in incremental conversions.  Accor Hotels’ use of the right extensions for their business helped them meet their goals of driving online and offline conversions, giving customers the information they were seeking, and reinforcing customer trust.
This ad for Novotel, Accor’s four-star International midscale brand for business & leisure travelers, checks off all of the right boxes.  Sitelinks drive online conversions, a location extension (with a phone number) allows for an offline customer interaction, while customer ratings and social extensions reinforce customer trust.

For more details about the new format of location extensions, head over to the Help Center.  And for more ad extensions Best Practices, check out our full collection on the Help Center.

Posted by Ayush Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords

Customize ads focused on a single call to action - phone calls

Tailor your ads for phone calls with creatives like “speak to a specialist today" or “call to make an appointment" to let people know they can easily reach your business without needing to visit your site.

For BizLab, a national telecommunications retailer, most conversions happen offline over the phone.  "The new call-only ads have improved lead volume and conversion rates by targeting mobile devices with ads, like “call now” that are simply focused on driving calls.”



Another major internet provider uses call-only campaigns to connect customers quickly and easily with their sales team. “With a phone call as the only call to action, call-only ads improve the mobile shopping experience by eliminating the intermediary step of visiting our website. They provide an easy way for consumers to get the product they want by calling into our sales center directly. Better customer experience coupled with an increase in calls & sales provides a win-win for both consumers and advertisers.”


Learn more

If you’re currently using the call extensions setting to create call-only ads, you can find details on how to upgrade to call-only campaigns in the AdWords Help Center.

Want to get more out of AdWords?  Sign up to receive our monthly Google Best Practices newsletter.

Posted by Amit Agarwal, Product Manager, AdWords

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*Google/Ipsos, The Role of Click to Call in the Path to Purchase, September, 2013.

People expect information right at their fingertips, whether it’s locating the nearest burger joint or booking a flight. And they’re searching for all this information on small screens -- sometimes as narrow as 4 inches. This means that mobile ads must make every character count.

Today, we are announcing an improvement to the way ads look on smartphones to make it easier and faster for consumers to find things they are searching for, while on the go.  Starting on October 15, 2014, your ad extensions may show instead of the second line of ad text (description line 2) on your mobile search ads. Description line 2 may or may not show, depending on how well it’s expected to perform. These improvements are designed to show more relevant and useful information to your customers. Many advertisers have already optimized their ad text in a way that’s updated for longer headlines in keeping with our ads best practices, so no action is required in many cases.

Highlighting the information that matters most to your mobile customers

By showing ad extensions in this more prominent location, consumers will have easier access to information about your business, like your location and product offerings.  Advertisers will see improved ad performance because you’ll be able to:

• Highlight featured products and services in a more pronounced way using callouts
• Provide useful and timely local information with location extensions
• Take customers to relevant pages on your site, like to the sale or promotion page, with sitelinks

What this looks like

Let’s take a look at an example business, Flowers Forever, to see how this update will work.  Before the update, people who searched for “flowers” on Google.com saw the ad on the left which shows the business’ website URL, two lines of general information and a link to place orders.
After the update, potential customers may see a Google Maps marker that shows the location of the flower shop, in addition to the website URL, ad creative and online order form -- all within one ad.

By eliminating the second line of ad text, we give businesses another point of engagement with customers in their ads -- in this case, it’s the additional location extension.  With just a single click on their smartphones, consumers can now directly engage with Flowers Forever in three ways: they can visit the mobile website, place an order, or get directions to visit the store.

Getting the most out of your mobile ads
While no specific action is required for these improvements, it’s always a good idea to keep these mobile ads best practices in mind:

• Ensure that your most important information is in the first line of ad text (description line 1) to address customer needs right away.  Remember to keep this text within the 35 character limit.
• Enable all relevant extensions to help consumers find information faster and increase clickthrough rates (CTR).
• Use mobile preferred creatives to help consumers quickly and easily take action while on the go. You’ll also get better results when your ads are more relevant to mobile searchers.

We’re constantly adapting our products to better meet consumer needs and help businesses connect with customers.  While we believe that these new updates will provide improved performance for your mobile ads, you may opt out of this offering when it becomes available in October via a form on this Help Center article.

Posted by Senthil Hariramasamy, Product Manager, AdWords

Whether it’s free shipping on all laptops or a price match guarantee on smartphones, the more information people have, the better purchase decisions they can make online. That’s why we’re introducing callout extensions: additional text that shows with your Google search ads, highlighting specific information about your products and services. Callouts will start rolling out today, with full availability to all advertisers in the next few weeks.

Example text ad highlighting callout extensions

Strengthen your message

Callouts show valuable information to potential customers before they click your ad; while also being a factor in Ad Rank. Use them to draw attention to important product details and benefits. Or highlight what makes your business different from your competitors.

“The use of callout extensions has meant we’ve been able to let our customers know how much more our hotels have to offer than just rooms. Spas, restaurants and meeting facilities are just a few of the attractive options our hotels have to offer, which may not be seen through a traditional revenue driving campaign. In just one month after implementing callout extensions, we’ve seen a 9% increase in conversion rate.” - James Harrower, Senior Search Manager, Hilton Worldwide

Callouts can also be used effectively in combination with other ad formats. For example, if you’re already using sitelinks for “Women’s Clothing” and “Back to School,” create a callout for “20% off entire site” to encourage people to click through and make a purchase. Or if you’re using call extensions, highlight “24/7 customer support” so your customers know they can call your business for help. However you plan to use callouts, make sure to keep them focused and relevant.

Create your first callout

You can manage, schedule, and report on your callouts from the Ad extensions tab. Since callouts can be added at the account, campaign, or ad group level, you can provide more general information about your products and services at the account or campaign level, and more detailed information at the ad group level.

For example, add callouts for “Special discounts” or “Free shipping” to campaigns containing more general keywords like cheap flights or shoes respectively. Or add callouts for product details at the ad group level to support more specific keywords like men’s running shoes or 12 cup coffee makers.

Keep in mind callouts are limited to 25 characters each and up to four can show with your ad. They can also co-trigger with all other ad formats in the auction.
Learn More

To learn more about creating and managing callouts, see our AdWords Help Center article.

Posted by Senthil Hariramasamy, Product Manager, AdWords

Whether users are searching for clothes, car insurance, or a holiday, they have never had so much choice. And as users increasingly rely on the opinions and experiences of others to help them choose, a brand's reputation matters more than ever before. That's why we've developed ways to show ratings, reviews and social endorsements for your business as part of your search ads on Google. This kind of information makes your ads more useful to potential customers and can improve ad performance.

Introducing Consumer Ratings Annotations
Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out consumer ratings annotations, a new format for search ads that provides detailed consumer opinion data. Consumer ratings annotations highlight one or more strongly rated aspects of your business as part of your ad. For example, if you're an insurance company, this annotation may be focused on claims handling. If you're an airline, it may highlight your rewards program.

Testing with our beta advertisers has shown that consumer ratings annotations can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 10% on average. Many advertisers have already seen the positive impact of this format. Brian Borkowski, Director of Digital Marketing at Farmers Insurance Group, says, "Consumer ratings annotations help us stand out from competitors and attract new customers. When we looked at our ads that displayed these ratings, we saw an increase in CTR, which speaks to the awareness, trust and impact from this format."

Consumer Ratings Annotations: Powered by Google Consumer Surveys
Data for this annotation comes from hundreds of thousands of surveys we've run using the Google Consumer Surveys platform. Google Consumer Surveys provides a controlled platform for sampling consumer opinion, helping to avoid some of the potential biases and risks with other types of open-to-everyone review platforms. Each rating is based on at least hundreds of completed surveys, with the average above 1000. We plan to regularly refresh the survey data to keep the ratings current.

Learn more
For the last few years, we’ve been working on bringing trust and transparency to your search ads with formats like seller ratings and review extensions. Consumer ratings annotations will soon start showing with several hundred advertisers' search ads in the US, UK and Canada. We hope to expand availability to more advertisers in the future, so drop us a line if you’re interested in showing consumer ratings annotations with your ads.

To learn more about consumer ratings annotations, check out the AdWords Help Center.

Authored by Shreyas Doshi, Group Product Manager, AdWords

Sitelinks are an important part of successful ads.  They show value to potential customers before a click occurs, while also being (along with other extensions) a factor of ad rank.  User interaction with sitelinks is so strong that you should consider them a basic part of your ad text - title, description, display URL and sitelinks.  Optimize the messaging in this space routinely, just as you do with ad text.

Many advertisers aren’t taking advantage of this excellent feature just yet, so before we start optimizing you may need to implement them.  Adding sitelinks boosts the average CTR on an ad by 10-20% (+20-50% when the search is one of your branded terms), so that implementation should be time well spent.

Make sure to have at least six active sitelinks for desktop and four active sitelinks for mobile, but remember that you can go all the way up to twenty total per ad group or campaign.  Sitelinks allow 25 characters for the link itself, and that space allows for testing.  We’ve found that somewhat shorter sitelinks are the most effective, though, so try to keep them closer to 18-20 characters for desktop and 12-15 characters for mobile.

We think sitelinks are a great proven feature, and we also think that they can be made better.

Reporting on Sitelinks

Start by knowing how you’re doing.

When reviewing these statistics, remember to compare sitelinks to one another and not to overall ad performance (as CTR on sitelinks is almost universally lower than a click on an ad, even though an ad with sitelinks will perform better than an ad without sitelinks).  You can also look at a sitelink’s contribution to the entire creative.  If you segment by “This Extension vs. Other” you can see if that extension is encouraging clicks on the headline or other links.

Identify your strong performers in terms of CTR (on the link itself or the surrounding ad), conversion rate, and conversion volume to establish a baseline of what target you can shoot for with low performers.  If certain sitelinks aren’t receiving a lot of impressions they’ve been passed over by the system, which means that you could probably work on improving those first.

(Quick aside - Beyond normal reporting, it’s also a good idea to do a simple sense check.  Are those the six {or twenty} pages that would be the most useful for your customers?  Even if CTR or impressions are low, is there a minority of your users that will find that sitelink very useful?  You may want to keep that link in place for them.)

Once you’ve found what’s not working, try out new text to improve performance.  If CTR is fine but your conversion rate is lagging, you could be sending traffic to the wrong page or setting user expectations incorrectly with a misleading link.  As with your ads, even top performers could potentially be improved upon.  Think about something new you may want to try.

When viewing your sitelink data, the info is available at the ad, ad group, campaign, and account level.  Add or remove these columns on the Ad Extensions tab to determine just how specific you want your info to be.

Testing Your Sitelinks

Pure A/B testing isn’t possible because each sitelink must point to different content.  When you’re identifying what’s lagging behind, recognize that other variables can muddle your results (things like ad tests, bid changes or seasonality).  You can try out variations of sitelinks in different campaigns or sets of ad groups to see what works better, but it’s still not going to be a perfect solution.  Recognize the imperfection of this whenever reviewing your results.

Sitelink testing shouldn’t be as frequent as your ad testing (due to the lack of A/B testing).  Monthly or quarterly reviews might make sense for you, depending on your volume.

Apply ad copy testing principles to your new sitelinks.  Think of distinct calls to action and benefits that relate to a user’s search and the page you’re directing them to.  You can also take lessons from previous ad tests and apply them.  For example, you can use losing (but still strong) ad copy as your sitelinks or their descriptions.

Sitelinks with Additional Detail
You also have the option to add additional detail to your sitelinks, which is great opportunity to prove value to customers before they click.  At present, sitelinks automatically serve descriptions where appropriate.  That feature is going away in the near future, though, so add in descriptions yourself sooner rather than later.

Mobile Sitelinks

Try to speak to mobile users.  Think about mobile intent and how it differs from desktop, and then reflect that way of thinking in your sitelinks.  You’ll also want to keep mobile sitelinks shorter (to around 12-15 characters) to ensure they aren’t cut off.

Closing

You can show users valuable information about your site right in your ads via sitelinks.  It’s imperative that they’re present, and once they’re there you should focus on making them as good as they can be (just as you do with the ads themselves).  Sitelinks not only increase the relevance of your ads, they increase the relevance of the user experience you deliver after the click.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Ad extensions are a way to give potential customers useful and relevant info beyond a regular text ad.  You can win a customer’s consideration, convince her of your value, or drive her right to a conversion.  Ask yourself which extensions would fit with your keywords and fulfill a potential user’s needs.

People engage with ads that have extensions.  Seller ratings give users confidence in your website.  Call extensions connect customers right to your employees.  Advertisers spend lots of time optimizing their ad text (which is great), but you should know that implementing extensions is typically a more impactful way to improve CTR.   An ad extension adds value to potential customers just by being present.  Additionally, with the recent changes to ad rank, extensions have become an increasingly important part of getting your ads noticed.

Every type of extension that we offer is intended to benefit our users, which translates to a higher CTR for you.  Many, such as sitelinks, show improvements of 10-20%.

There are tangible and measurable gains to giving users more information, and extensions are auto-optimized to show the best possible combination on each and every auction.  Sometimes the “best possible combination” translates to areas aside from CTR - users may get value from seeing a phone number on a desktop ad (i.e. a direct connection to your business via a phone number) even if that doesn’t translate to a routine click.

We’ve also found that more information is a good thing, which means that ads with multiple extensions perform better than ads with only one extension.  Identify which extensions work for your business and implement them.  The best combination of these extensions is automatically determined on an auction-by-auction basis.

Enabling extensions is a good thing, but remember that your extensions are most likely not going to show 100% of the time.  Only certain positions are eligible to show certain extensions.

There are lots of extensions in existence (and even more in beta).  While this set of options will continue to evolve, here is what is presently available and where they can appear on the page:

Note: Search Partner site owners choose what, if any, formats they allow, so not everything will show by default.

As you can see, placement on the results page determines which of your extensions can be shown.  If you know you have great extensions in place for users, watch your average position and placement to ensure that your extensions are showing as often as possible.

Things to Remember

We try to show as many relevant formats as possible in the available space.  Since there are so many moving pieces, there’s no way to prioritize which extensions you want to show.  Enable whatever makes sense for your customers and let the AdWords system decide within those options.  The specific extensions that are displayed are a function of your previous performance, user context and available space on the page.

Clicks on extensions are typically charged the same price you would be charged for a click on your ad.  There are a few exceptions, though.  The below types of interactions are all free:

• Phone calls from your forwarding number on call extensions that show on desktops/tablets 
• Links to reviews from seller ratings extensions
• Clicks to the review site on your review extensions
• Clicks on +1 button or a link to your Google+ page

In many cases there isn’t a lot to optimize for extensions.  Implementation is the only step to take for a practitioner, but that doesn’t mean you can enable them and never think of them again.  Be aware of what’s going on in your account so that you know you’re saying the things your customers want to hear.

Reporting on Extensions

Report on how your extensions are doing by taking a quick snapshot of before and after implementation.  Take note of when you turned on certain extensions and compare dates in the interface to ensure you’re heading the right direction.  This isn’t going to be a perfect solution, as there are lots of other variables present over that same timeframe, but it should give you directional evidence regarding your account’s performance.

Segment your reports by click type to see detailed performance for many of your extensions.  Anything that’s active in that time period will appear as its own type of click.  There isn’t any reporting on the extensions that appear automatically (seller ratings, social annotations, previous visit annotations).

Extensions are a proven way to provide value to users and increase your ad’s CTR.  Implementing every type of extension that makes sense for you should benefit both your users and your account.

Stay tuned for Part II of the Field Guide.  We’ll cover details about the available extensions and things that practitioners should keep in mind when implementing them.

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Recent research shows that 70% of mobile searchers have called a business directly from search results and that over 40 million calls from Google ads are made each month to advertisers around the world. It’s clear that calls are important to businesses -- and we want to help you measure them in AdWords.

We announced on October 1st that phone calls would soon be added as an important conversion type as part of AdWords. Starting today, phone calls from mobile click-to-call ads will be added to the regular Conversion columns, which enable them to be used with automated bidding solutions like Conversion Optimizer. These mobile call conversions are available in countries where Google forwarding numbers are available.¹  In addition, calls made by customers from your mobile and desktop ads will be counted in your “Estimated Total Conversions,” a new column you can use to measure the full value you're getting from AdWords.

Calls as conversions are counted based on the aggregate number of calls generated by your ads and the duration of the phone calls. This is the same type of reporting that we have been providing on calls for several years.

Success with calls as conversions in AdWords

Businesses using AdWords have found that adding  phone numbers to their ads is an important way to connect with customers and drive incremental sales. Learn more.

Room & Board, a home furnishings retailer, uses call extensions and call conversions to track interest in their brand:

”Since we have implemented call extensions, we have seen nearly 30% of our total conversions come from phone calls. We want our customers to connect with us in the way they prefer. Call extensions and call conversions give us that ability and allow us to measure results at the same time."

Improve your performance with automated bidding

Previously, calls were counted in their own column called “Phone Call Conversions.” Now, call conversions from mobile ads are counted in the regular Conversion columns, so you can use free automated bidding tools like Target CPA to improve performance and save time.

Understand the full value of your advertising

Online ads can help drive conversions beyond a purchase made directly on your website. Adding calls to the Estimated Total Conversions column gives you a more holistic view of how your keywords drive those conversions, so you can set bids and budgets that more fully reflect the value you're getting from AdWords.

For a more in-depth product walkthrough of Estimated Total Conversions, calls as conversions, and a review of best practices, join us for a webinar tomorrow, November 13th at 10am PT. You can sign up here.

Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Calls

When people use Google to research and buy things, they're interested in the most relevant and useful results. Ad extensions help by providing more information to potential customers and additional ways for them to respond. For example, they can call your business number, see your business location on a map, or choose an even more relevant landing page that you're promoting with sitelinks. Ad extensions typically improve clickthrough rate and overall campaign performance because they make ads more useful.

Today, we're announcing improvements in the AdWords auction that let us more consistently show more relevant ad extensions and formats.

Ad Rank improvements

Our system for ordering ads on search results pages uses a calculation called Ad Rank. Previously, Ad Rank was calculated using your max CPC bid and your Quality Score. With this update, Ad Rank will also take into account a third component: the expected impact from your ad extensions and formats. In addition, we've increased the importance of Ad Rank in determining whether your ad is eligible to be displayed with extensions and formats.

Here are some more details and implications of these changes:

• Ad extensions and formats can now influence the position of your ad on the search results page. If two competing ads have the same bid and quality, then the ad with the more positive expected impact from extensions will generally appear in a higher position than the other.
• When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page.
• Because Ad Rank is now more important in determining whether your ad is shown with extensions and formats, you might need to increase your Quality Score, bid, or both for extensions and formats to appear. 
• In each auction, we'll generally show your highest performing and most useful combination of extensions and formats among those eligible. So there's no need to try to guess which extensions will help improve your clickthrough rate the most. 
• You may see lower or higher average CPCs in your account. You may see lower CPCs if your extensions and formats are highly relevant, and we expect a large positive performance impact relative to other competitors in the auction. In other cases, you may see higher CPCs because of an improvement in ad position or increased competition from other ads with a high expected impact from formats.
• For now, this update only affects search ads appearing on Google Search.

We've updated our Help Center articles on topics including ad extensions and how we rank ads to reflect these important changes.

Recommendations for using extensions

Extensions make your ads more useful and can improve your campaign performance. So you should add extensions that make sense for your business type and campaign goals. With these improvements to AdRank, our systems will do even more to automatically serve extensions in the contexts when they're most beneficial.

For example, consider someone downtown searching on a mobile phone for "auto repair." In this example, the user might be most likely to respond to your ad when they can click to call a phone number or tap a link to get directions to visit in person. So we may show a combination of call and location extensions with your mobile search ad.

Now imagine if someone were searching for "auto repair" on a laptop computer in the suburbs. Say your ad earned the 3rd ad position above the organic results in this auction. We might show your seller rating and sitelinks because that's the highest performing and most useful combination of extensions that could be shown with your ad in this particular auction and ad position.

We're always looking for ways to make ads more relevant to a user's intent and context. After months of testing, we're confident that these AdRank changes help achieve that goal by more consistently showing people the most useful combination of extensions and formats.

Posted by Chris Roat, Staff Software Engineer