Breaking News: Google has this week modified their ad headline format giving you yet another reason to care about Quality Score [7]. The new ad headline may display twice as much information as before, combining both your headline and description line 1 fields, into one super-big headline (with its larger, bolder font) where it’s most likely to be noticed.
This change in ad text [8] headline format only affects high Quality Score ads that appear above the search results on Google. Additionally, it will only super-size your ad text if each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation. The headline and description line 1 will be separated by a hyphen. Now, some top placement ads will have even longer, more eye-catching headlines. Here's just one example of the longer ad text format for high quality score ads:
So in summary, I think that:
- It's a small ad text change but hey, I'll take any edge I can to get more visibility over competing text-ads [9], especially in competitive search verticals like "life insurance". In the above screenshot, see how much the Accuquotelife.com Ad really stands out relative to the other ads. They included a period after the "Compare Rates and Save up to 70%.", where as reliaquote.com did not include a period after "Compare Life Insurance Quotes".
- The ad looks more like an organic SERP, which already displays the longer headline. This may trick more people into not realizing the difference and clicking on paid results.
- It's yet another benefit of optimizing your campaigns for higher Quality Score, something that I strongly agree with.
- Going forward, consider not writing those ad texts that use the entire headline, description line 1 and description line 2 fields as one big run-on sentence!
- Instead, consider ending your description line one with a period, question mark or exclamation mark.
- And of course, (shameless plug) check out our PPC Tools [10] for Quality Score optimization so you can take advantage of this longer ad text headline that is only available for high quality score ads!
(More: Revisiting the Economics of Quality Score: Why QS Is Up to 200% More Valuable in 2013 [11])
