Google Announces Experimental Update to Extensions

Sometimes it seems Google is in a near-constant state of experimentation when it comes to AdWords. Recently, some advertisers received an email about an upcoming change regarding how phone numbers appear in ads. This change would impact campaigns that utilize location and call extensions—a local retail number may appear in the ad when the location extension appears, overriding whatever number may be in the call extension.

There is big emphasis on “may” in this case, as there is still a possibility no number will appear in the location extension. According to a Google spokesperson, this is due to a desire to fully test the impact this change yields.

This update does have the potential to give further insight into your consumers’ behavior, and could prove valuable in optimizing your targeting methods. However, if you use an outside call tracking line in your call extensions, you may be worried about losing that detailed call data. If that is the case, there is an option to opt out of the update.