Dynamic sitelinks can be extremely useful to retail marketers. Not only do they help boost click-though-rate, they also guide shoppers to relevant pages on a retailer’s website based on their recent search activities.
Historically, sitelinks are an important part of a successful text ad. According to Google AdWords, sitelinks show value to potential customers before a click occurs, while also being (along with other extensions) a factor of ad rank.
Marketers should be including sitelinks in their text ad along with all other basic ad text including title, description and display URL.
How does Google create a dynamic sitelink?
When people are searching on Google to complete a task, like buy a car or plan a trip, they might perform several searches and click multiple search results.
Based on this activity, AdWords can determine which pages on your site are highly relevant to their current search. Dynamic sitelinks are created based off of that search information.
Dynamic sitelinks benefit retailers because:
- They can boost the average CTR on an ad by 10 to 20 percent (via Google)
- If the search is a retailer’s branded term this can jump CTR by 20 to 50 percent (via Google)
- They automatically generate sitelinks to complement your text ad
According to Roman Fitch, Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy, dynamic sitelinks are typically more than 25 characters and are generated by Google and cannot be found or created within Adwords.
“They also don’t have UTM tags, which means they’re not coming from the feed – therefore not tied to Google Shopping,” Fitch said.
According to Fitch, dynamic sitelinks can monetize two links in a single text ad and have the ability to enhance a better user experience.
For the above example, the highlighted product within the dynamic sitelink also has the highest CTR of all products that match the following criteria:
- product type = helmets
- brand = easton
- clicks > 10 over past 30 days
According to Google, dynamic sitelinks can appear on ads on desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices with full Internet browsers.
Most ads are eligible to include dynamic sitelinks, as long as the campaign type is set to “Search Network with Display Select” or “Search Network only.”
If retail marketers have already set up their sitelinks, those will show instead of dynamic sitelinks.
Retailers can always opt out or back into this feature, via Google’s form.