How to Extend Your Online Ads

The Adwords system offers some rewards for advertisers that use multiple Google products and one very nice bonus is available for advertisers who also have a Google merchant center account. Google's merchant center allows retailers to upload product data that can be found on the other Google properties like Google product search and sometimes even on the Google.com search results page.

For example a search for men's clothing on Google.com/products shows results uploaded from the Google merchant center. You also see Adwords ads on the page. Remember, this is yet another place that your ads can show if you are opted into the search partner network. If you have a merchant center account you can connect it to your Adwords account and showcase your products in an Adwords plus box ad.

So how does this work? Well when your Adwords ad appear, if your Google merchant center account includes a relevant product Adwords may show an extension that includes images, titles and prices of your closest matching products beneath your ad using a plus box format. To set up this extension you do have to have an existing Google merchant center account and have products listed in it. Assuming that you do, you should now connect your Adwords account to your merchant center account.

First just select the campaign that you want to work with over on the left side bar view and then click the add extensions tab. Remember, if you do not see the ad extension tab just use the drop down to the right to make sure that it's selected to show in your account. Make sure that your viewing the product extension set from the drop down to the left. If you have a merchant center account you will be able to select from the products that you have in that account from a drop down. Pick the one that makes the most sense for this campaign and then you are done. Your ads will now be eligible to run with product extensions. That is it; you have now connected your merchant center account to your Adwords campaign.

So take a look at what this report looks like after your product extension ads have been running for a while. Here you can get data on clicks and impressions, click the rates, your costs and even your average positions. A few more things to note about product extensions, Adwords does not allow you to select specific ads to connect with specific products in your merchant center. But you can help the system connect the most appropriate products with your ads by including product information in the merchant center account. These are called attributes and they help Google understand the nature of the products that you are uploading into the system.

You can find all the details over at Google.com/merchants but just know that the more information that you provide the more likely that Adwords will extend your ads with product information and the more likely it will select the more appropriate images from your inventory in the merchant center.

Once you connect your accounts it can take up to twelve hours to see product extensions with your Adwords ads. And remember Adwords does not show them all the time once it's setup you will have a chance to really showcase your merchandise on the Adwords search engine results pages, once again making your ad stand out from the competition.

About the Author: Sadhiv Mahandru has been involved in online marketing for over a decade covering PPC, Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Content Creation and also creating effective websites. A SEO Company in Manchester and providing services throughout the UK. You can learn more about Internet Marketing and SEO by reading his own blog which is updated frequently.