2018 is a year full of change, what with the GDPR regulations and the hoops organisations are having to jump through, you would think at least you can rely on Google Adwords to ensure a steady stream of leads come your way.
And just when you thought it was a great time to impress your prospects with your hard earned social proof – Google announce that starting this month your Adwords ads will no longer have the privilege of being accompanies by third-party reviews.
Come February, your extensions and all of their data will be wiped from the Google Adwords UI completely and gone forever!
Google’s support page for review extensions now shows a big red box telling users that they are going to be removed (while underneath explaining why review extensions are so fantastic), it doesn’t give any explanation as to why they are being removed!
If you missed the boat, review extensions allow(ed) advertisers to share positive quotes, rankings, awards etc with prospects underneath the adverts that were run. They appeared based on a number of factors such as ad rank, review status and generally down to Google’s say so.
They were exceptionally difficult to get but once they were approved and live, they were unmatched by any other extension in terms of displaying social proof for your business as they could easily improve CTR by a considerable percentage.
What can we replace Google Adwords Review Extensions with?
Well there is nothing directly than can replace them unfortunately, at least non that can offer social proof in the way that the Adwords Review Extensions did. If you are not already using Sitelink Extensions, Callout Extensions and Structured Snippets then these can be a very good place to start.
In terms of social proof, the only way now to utilise it is by placing it within the copy of your advert. You can’t go all out and promote your social proof…but you can paraphrase reviews within the confines of your advert text.
What to do now?
If you are currently running adverts with Review Extensions then make sure you download the data from Google Adwords! Why? Well – Bing Review extensions are still alive and working.
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