ADWORDS DISCONTINUES REVIEW EXTENSIONS (POTENTIAL IMPACT ON ADVERTISERS)

As we have become accustomed to, Google gives a directive and we all scamper around to fall in line. However, Google’s decision to discontinue review extensions in January was met with indifference by most industry experts. Review extensions were launched in 2013, and four years after the introduction, they became one of the least used extensions in AdWords. Experts were left frustrated by the difficulty in getting Google’s approval for the reviews but, for those few who trudged through the approval process, most advertisers saw an increase in CTR.

POTENTIAL IMPACT ON ADVERTISERS

There is a general belief that the removal of review extensions will have little to no impact on advertisers. This is because review extensions were seldom used in the industry. For those advertisers who were fortunate enough to have their review extensions approved, Google recommends replacing them with sitelink, callout and structured snippet extensions. Though these are not like for like replacements, they provide ad copy with some much-needed enhancements. Another way around this is to reference positive reviews in your ad copy. Paraphrasing a review in your ad text is not forbidden in AdWords as long as it’s linked to an accredited source.