ICYMI: Structured Snippet Extensions

November 2, 2015/luke

This summer, our own Lane George covered Ad Extensions, a performance-boosting contributing factor to AdRank – why they’re important, what the difference is between dynamic and manual extensions, and which are the most effective for improving click-through-rates. One automated extension – dynamic structured snippets – are particularly well-loved in the paid search community. They lead to more qualified traffic and higher chances of conversions as they offer consumers a glimpse of your content before they click (also lessening the chances of wasting money on clicks that will lead nowhere). Indeed, this was Google’s intent: according to the Inside Adwords blog, dynamic structured snippets were introduced in early 2015 in an effort to make search ads “more relevant and helpful while saving you time and simplifying campaign management.”

What Dynamic Structured Snippets Are

Dynamic structured snippets offer the opportunity to educate your potential customers about your business before they even click your ad. They provide information about your services and products below the text of your ad.

An example from Google (this screenshot is Google’s, not ours!):

This example shows the additional information that you can show with dynamic structured snippets. In this case, an airline has the extra opportunity to attract a qualified click with a snippet about how many flights from San Francisco to New York City are offered. This is in addition to the 30% offer included in the actual ad text. Both pieces of information are important; having them both improves the chances of attracting a potential flyer (and has the potential to improve Return on Investment).

The information included in dynamic structured snippets has, until recently, been automatically generated from categories of content on advertisers’ websites. Google will automatically pull the information and show it in your existing ads if:

The ad is eligible
The associated landing page has a category for search that matches

Why We’re Bringing This Up Now

In August, Google announced that the company would be building on the success of dynamic structured snippets by rolling out extensions. These would allow for, according to the blog, “advertiser-provided structured information that show with your text ads.” This is a response to advertiser feedback, specifically, while dynamic structured snippets are very successful, it would be nice to customize the information that shows up.

What You’ll Be Able to Customize

A predefined “Header”
A list of “Values” that make sense for your business

Below is the example used on the Inside Adwords post (again, this screenshot is Google’s, not ours!):

This example is catered to a hotel using these structured snippets – they can choose “amenities” as a header, and then choose what “Values” to highlight related to the header.

Being able to specifically point out what makes your business unique before users even click will undoubtedly allow for even more qualified traffic and less wasted budget. We can’t wait to see how this unfolds as it unrolls to more businesses!