by brad
Google Is Removing The Ability to Write Excellent Display URLs
1:37 pm in PPC Marketing Blog by brad
Google recently announced that all display URLs will be displayed in lowercase characters.
It’s not uncommon to see ads such as:
- CertifiedKnowledge.org
- Certifiedknowledge.org
- certifiedknowledge.org
Have different CTRs.
If you add components such as subdirectories, then you can see where the readability of certain URLs are much different:
- IBM.com/BladeServer
- ibm.com/bladeserver
The real issue comes into play when you have URLs which can be interpreted in multiple ways:
commentsexchange.com
I’ve seen countelss examples like this URL, which is it:
- CommentsExchange.com – a blogging commenting system
- CommentSexChange.com – a sex change forum
I’ve even seen heatmaps that show display URL as the 2nd most looked at component of ad copy.
I don’t think this change will have a large effect on one word domains, its two and three word domains that might see a change in CTR.
We’ll have to wait and see how this change is executed and then decide upon how to test display URLs.
I am SO not a fan of this idea. Campaigns where the company has a longer domain name benefit from being able to use capitalization, some company/domain names (as you point out) are unfortunate without capitalizations, branding campaigns need the capitalization, etc.
Also, extensive testing over the last three years has proven to me that my ads get a significant boost in CTR with capitalization.
Bad, bad idea.
It BREAKS BRANDING CONSISTENCY. *really* ticked off over this.
I’m not particularly happy about this either. As per netmeg’s comment, it breaks branding consistency :-/
Not a big fan of this. I’ve got lot’s of ads that have won test with capitals int the display url.