Think you’ve got your head around Google Ad character limits? Think again.
Google really likes to keep us on our toes. After the announcement of their Google Adwords rebrand (enter the shiny new Google Ads, and the end of the previous version of the online interface), the web behemoth have once again been mixing things up; they’re giving us a lot more characters to play with. We’ll now start seeing ads with up to three 30-character headlines, and two 90-character descriptions.
There have been a number of changes to Google’s text ad format and appearance over the years, with the last major change being the move from the classic text ad (25-35-35) in 2016. The older ads featured just one 25-character headline and two 35-character descriptions. Since then, we’ve all got used to having two 30-character headlines and one 80-character description line to play with.
This latest announcement from Google gives advertisers a whole lot more room to play with – and is likely to make advertising even more prominent on the search engine.
| Text Ads | Expanded Text Ads | Available late August 2018 | |
| More headlines | One 25-character headline | Two 30-character headlines | Three 30-character headlines |
| Longer descriptions | Two 35-character description lines | One 80-character description line | Two 90-character description lines |
Google suggests adding a third headline to your existing expanded ads as a starting point. It’ll be a big job, but with the extra room is certainly worth taking advantage of to highlight your USPs – and you can be sure that even if you don’t, the competition will be.
We’d recommend taking advantage of the advance warning and using the next few weeks to review your copy. Where could your ads benefit from those extra characters? What else could you shout about? If you’re ready with your text when the change goes live and others in your industry aren’t, it could be an excellent chance to get ahead.
