Google have just started sending out emails about the new dynamic sitelinks that are being rolled out globally.
Essentially, Google is going to add sitelinks to your ads unless you opt out. and these will replace your current sitelinks if the system deems that “their” sitleink is more appropriate than “yours”.
As yet these have not shown up on any of our accounts (as far as we can tell”) – but there are a couple of things that concern us.
Firstly, is there going to be any way for us to configure these sitelinks? There are areas of a site which we may not want to have sitelinks pointing to. Areas of low profit margins, areas that we feel we have to include in our website, but don’t really want to promote – for whatever reason!
Secondly, when will they appear? Presumably, if we have set up our own sitelinks – and these are the ones we have decided are the areas of our site we want to promote through sitelinks – then we will have to opt out of the automated option to avoid Google trumping us with their sitelink.
But perhaps most interesting in the announcement is this line:
“Clicks on dynamic sitelinks are free — you’ll still be charged for clicks on the headline of your ad and other ad extensions.”
So – let me get this straight… if I configure my own sitelink, to a page on my site that I want to promote, I’ll pay for any click on that link. But if I let Google decide which sitelinks to display I wont pay for clicks on those links…. or am I missing something?
Is any of this related to the recent segmentation that Google introduced where we are able to see the performance of “this extension vs. others” which so many of us have used to discover the hardly anyone is clicking on the sitelinks? I suspect the two are somehow related.
It’s going to be fun to see how this one rolls out over the next few weeks.
What are your thoughts – are you happy for Google to generate sitelinks to pages on your site – or will you most likely disable this new function?
