Yesterday Google announced that some big changes are to take place within Google AdWords.

These Google AdWords changes are probably the biggest update since AdWords was first formed and will change the way we all advertise!

There are 5 main Google AdWords changes that we have highlighted – read on to find out what they are!

1. Local searches will start featuring on Google Maps.

Google Calls this the next gen of local search ads.

These new ads will be appearing within the maps platform when your perform a local search. These ads will appear in mobile, desktop and google.com alike increasing its collateral performance.

Furthermore, the new ads within Google Maps directory will allow you to personalise them in order to include brand logos, inventory and special offers.

So when looking at Google maps, instead of having the name of the company only, it will feature your logo in the map itself rather than next or below it.

Once someone clicks on your logo, it will then be presented the special offers you are running at the moment as well as allowing potential customers to find if you have the products they are looking for in your inventory.

Another great feature is that supposing that you are looking for a laptop computer, Google will automatically show the best buy logo indicating which shop is selling the item cheaper in your area.

2. Headlines will increase in size, possible use of double headlines and more characters

Back in February Google got rid of side ads as a way to unify the look of Google throughout Mobile and Desktop.

This changes left a big gap for advertisers to stand out from the crowd.

The way they are correcting this is by implementing a change that is much welcomed that is the increase of size on headlines.

In tests performed by Google it was found that the increase of font size in headlines increased click through rate by as much as 25%.

(image from Wordstream)

On top of that, the increase on the number of characters for the headlines will allow advertisers to target their customers more effectively resulting in better qualified traffic to your website.

In addition to what I’ve already covered, Google is also expanding the number of characters on the description line as seen below.

3. Google will be allowing for a better measurement of Online to In-store conversions

What Google proposes here is a way of cross-matching online research to final purchase in store.

This isn’t particularly new as Google admit that around 1 billion conversions have been tracked this way.

The difference is that it will now be widely available for those that want to bridge the gap and know exactly how their marketing efforts are paying off.

How is this done?

According to Google they will look at phone location history to determine if the person who searched for the item online ended up walking to a shop and purchase in-store.

4. Display Ads to become responsive

Simply put, Google is saying that soon all you wil have to do is insert your URL, a headline, item description and an image and Google will do the rest.

This means that you will be able to run ads that adapt to the website that they’re being shown in without having to create different ads for every platform.

5. Device Bidding to change (insert smiley face here)

Finally the last change that we find is the best thing since they made the terrible update 3 years ago when they “enhanced” campaigns.

Basically they have realised that they’d screwed up and backtracked into allowing us to set tablet bids as well as desktop and mobiles all separately from each other.

At the moment the way this is done is by you setting a base desktop bid and then set mobile bids as a multiplier from that (simply put, it’s awful!)

But now we’re finally back to where we were 3 years ago with the flexibility of bidding as we please.

This is all we know for now but we are very excited with the new changes that will be coming to us by the end of the year!

Stay tuned with us here at Click Convert and we will keep you updated on the Google AdWords changes and updates as soon as we know more.

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