Our latest roundup of all the Google updates you need to know about.
The AdWords Marketing Goals website
AdWords recently revealed its “Marketing Goals website,” a net new site built with your marketing goals front and center. The site is focused on four buckets of goals: increase online purchases, get customers in the door, get the phones ringing, and grow your app.
Exploring any one of these goal areas leads you to a rich overview of how Google AdWords can support your goals. Plus, learn from other AdWords customers by reading a library of success stories.
While the website may be a tad elementary for AdWords veterans, it provides a new way of browsing through AdWords’ features and offerings.
AdWords now testing price extensions on desktop
Price extensions for mobile ads have been available in beta since July.
This extension allows viewers to see pricing for products and services; it’s been in testing for the list format as well as a horizontal card layout.
The latter layout was spotted last week on desktop. Keep your eyes peeled for a broader release.
Speaking of extensions: promotion extensions are now offered on text ads
A new toy for your extension toolbox: promotion extensions are now available in text ads. Advertisers can promote a discount or special savings (25% off sportswear!) with a descriptive line of copy. This is now being tested on all devices.
Google AMP reporting gets an upgrade and a note about Google’s mobile-first index
Now, you can gain increased visibility into how your AMP pages are performing.
Google has added a new reporting filter under its Search Console Analytics report that allows you to choose whether to view performance for AMP pages in the rich card section (for example, the top news carousel) or AMP pages from the core mobile search results.
Previously, your only option was to view the carousel results.
And, while we’re on the topic of AMP, Google will not be using your AMP page versions for its mobile-first index—even if you do not have any mobile alternative.
So, if you have a desktop version of your website and you’ve built AMP pages to support it—but skipped a mobile version altogether—Google will default to indexing your desktop pages.
Holiday trend: Google is displaying oodles of shopping ads on desktop
Google has continued to reward product listing ads’ (PLAs) great performance by giving them more real estate over the years.
Recently, Google has been showing as many as 15 PLAs on mobile devices and up to 18 on desktop. Their secret? The scrolling slider of ads, which allows for up to 16 PLAs when clicked upon to expand the ads.
Also impacted: text ads showing above PLAs are becoming increasingly rare.
Rich cards now support restaurants and online courses
Local restaurants and online courses are new categories supported by Google rich cards.
These cards “contain a new user interface, such as ‘carousels that are easy to browse by scrolling left and right, or a vertical three-pack that displays more individual courses,’ per Google.
AMP is recommended, but not required.