Google has been making a number of changes recently to help make ad variations cleaner. The most recent update involves “IP addresses in the display URL field,” which Google now disallows. Google has also made it known that this change will affect all countries. It is the claim that this was made to help improve the user experience. Another recent change made had to do with phone numbers being inserted directly into the text fields of ad variations. This was also disallowed recently, and according to current alerts in Google Adwords campaigns, Google will be enforcing this starting in July 2013.
The ultimate goal for this change is to get more companies to start using Call Extensions in their campaigns, as that is what Call Extensions were originally made for. They are also more prominent than putting the phone number in your ad text as they usually appear just below the Headline (results can differ depending on how many different extensions you are currently using).
All-in-all both of these changes were implemented to improve the user’s experience and to make ad variations more appealing. In most cases, you will notice a nice boost in your overall CTR (Click Through Rate) which will only help your historical data, and ultimately help save you money by helping you achieve lower CPC (Cost-per-clicks) over time. With the new Enhanced Call Extensions, you can even look at specific data attributed to ads that have your phone number in them.
Written By: Ed Cehi, PPC Manager