Google Adwords Have Been Changing: Have You Noticed?

Google is constantly testing, updating and optimizing their search options. Marketers are running alongside trying to keep up and not lose any traffic, but it can become a little overwhelming.

 

Have you noticed the changes Google made to Adwords? Find out what we've been seeing! Share on X

 

Here are two recent changes to Google’s search network:

Ad Color Change:

Google users across the world have started seeing green labels instead of yellow ones on Google’s text ads. Ads displaying on Google now look like this:

 

Google confirmed with Search Engine Land on June 15th that they will start rolling out the green colored labels to all users.

Here’s what a Google representative said:

“We regularly test ways to improve the look and feel of our search results page. We’ve been experimenting with a green search ad label and have decided to roll it out based on positive feedback from users and advertisers. Our goal is to make our results page easy to use, and our labeling clear and prominent.”

Read this: Why Search Engine Marketing Needs to Be Part of Your Overall Strategy

Google has been doing a lot of testing, which we are sure they do regularly, but during the time Google was testing the green ad tag color it was also testing the color of its organic links. In May some users were seeing black links in their Google search results instead of blue. Google closely watched whether the change in color had any impact on users being able to distinguish paid and organic listings and found it had no influence, which they said was the goal.

If you’re not seeing the green ads yet, you will see them shortly.

 

New Ad Formats:

Immediately after Google removed ads from the right-hand side of search results, Google started testing a new format for text ads. Named Dubbed Expanded Text Ads, the new format features longer headlines that look like this:

 

As of now, headlines can extend to include the first line of description copy when that line ends with a punctuation mark. This formatting has only been available to ads served in positions 1, 2 and 3, but now that the right-hand side ads are gone, Google can change the text ad formatting across the board.

The big difference in this test is that the text ads will feature an extended headline and the full 70-character count of description copy allowing advertisers to get more creative when coming up with new headlines.

Read this: Google Removes Right Hand Sidebar Ads

Google said that they are making this change to help advertisers maximize their presence in mobile search results. “Optimized for screen sizes of the most popular smartphones, new expanded text ads in AdWords provide more ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click.”

This extra space will allow advertisers to better describe their products and services to searchers. Google has been testing out this format for some time and feels that it can benefit advertisers with up to 20% CTR lift over the old text ad format, though actual account-level results will vary.

Staying on top of Google’s Adword updates will only help you become a smarter marketer as you can continue to adjust your strategy to play by its rules. The sooner you jump on these changes, the sooner you’ll start seeing better results when using Google Adwords.