A new tool for Google AdWords gives advertisers more control over the key features that are highlighted in their ads.
The AdWords Structured Snippet Extension is now being rolled out, and it is a variation on the dynamic structured snippets that came out earlier in the year.
Values
Values such as amenities, product types and brands can all be selected in the order that you want for your campaign.
The difference between callouts and structured snippets is essentially a subtle one, but it is potentially extremely useful.
Google advises using callouts to “highlight what makes your business or products or services unique” and structured snippets to “highlight a specific aspect of the products or services you offer.”
Blog post
In an AdWords blog post, Google went into more detail about the new extensions:
“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.”
It went on: “From amenities to brands to product types, you’ll now be able to select a predefined ‘Header’ and input a list of customised 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.”
Roll out details
All AdWords accounts will get the new features over the coming weeks, although at the present time, structured snippets can only be created in English.
The AdWords Help Centre has detailed information on how to set up and use structured snippets in order to get the most out of them and boost the performance of an ad.
As additional text automatically inserted into ads might not be to the liking of some SEO professionals and other content creators, it remains to be seen how the new approach from Google will go down in the industry as a whole.
How AdWords will determine if and when snippets will show up is still unclear, so until the system is fully up and running, the results will be hard to anticipate.
