Earlier this year, Google Adwords introduced dynamic structured snippets, which can give customers a "preview" of the type of content your site provides.
While it's additional "real estate" for your ads, a lot of people got frustrated because these dynamic structured snippets would be adding "snippets" that are totally irrelevant.
Fortunately, Structured Snippets Extensions came to the rescue.
So What Are Structured Snippet Extensions?
Here's the verbatim from Google's announcement:
"Structured snippet extensions = advertiser-provided structured information that show with your text ads"
These are the available options for "Structured snippet extensions":
Structured snippet extensions are available in your ad extensions tab inside Adwords. (By the way, if you wish to opt-out of the dynamic structured snippets feature in adwords, you need to fill out this form)
Just create a new structured snippet. Then choose from one of the predefined headers.
A header reflects the category of the products or services that you provide.
For example, you're a college school and you'd like to highlight the "amenities" that your college provides.
Here's what you might want to include:
Like any ad extension, these new structured snippets can be further modified with:
- Device Preference - Do you want to show these snippets preferably on mobile?
- Start/end dates - Do you want to run these ads only in certain dates? Yes, it's possible
- Scheduling - And of course, if you only want to highlight a certain aspect of your products and services at certain schedules, you have that option as well.Personally, I've found them valuable and a necessary addition in the campaigns I'm managing and here are 3 reasons why:
1. Different From Callout Extensions
Structured snippet extensions are different from Callout Extensions. Here's a quick comparison between these two.
Remember:
- Structured snippets are certain aspects of your products and services that you offer
2. Boost Performance
Structured snippets typically boost the performance of an Ad. They're also a factor in Adrank.
Ad extensions in general can boost the performance of your ads by creating more reasons to click, improved visibility, and provide you with a better return of investment.
3. Improves Algorithm's Ad Extension Pick
Like any ad extension, Structured snippets are not always eligible to show. But by adding more extensions in your campaigns, you'll give the AdWords' algorithm a better chance to find out what's the best possible ad extension combination for your campaign.
Recommendation
Use "structured snippet extensions" whenever possible, as they are now mostly available in English accounts.
With the benefits it can provide, like boosting your ad performance and playing a role in Adrank, it's a quick way to gain a competitive advantage.
Hand-Picked Related Articles:
* Lead image adapted from Colin-47