Google Ads Location Extensions: A Quick Walkthrough

When you run a pay-per-click (PPC) ad and include a Google Ads Location Extension, you seriously grab attention. Describing your business’s physical location is a way to increase ad engagement, as well as your business credibility.

Google Ads Extensions allow you to add relevant additional information to help your potential customers discover more about your business.

Typically, these ad extensions include location, call buttons, structured snippets, callouts, and links to specific webpages.

You can see an example in the picture below:

Using ad extensions like the Google Ads Location Extension can boost your ad rank while providing your ads with increased engagement for your usual bid amount.

You’re about to learn how to use Google Ads Location Extension to increase your PPC ads’ clickthrough rates (CTR) for maximum sales. Let’s get right in!

How does the Google Ads extension Help Your PPC Campaign?

Google ad extensions are like snippets that contain additional information to help potential customers discover and choose your business.

Using extensions is a faster, more effective way to increase an ad’s CTR than simply optimizing ad texts. Ad extensions provide valuable answers to the immediate questions users might have about your business.

Typically, more information equals increased user’s interest. So, an ad with a single extension has the potential to perform less favorably than an ad with multiple extensions.

Using a combination of these extensions, which is best determined in an automatic auction, will give your brand prominence to stand out from among competitors.

Just like bids, ad quality, landing page, search intent, and Ad Rank thresholds, ad extensions are part of your Ad Rank factors. They increase ad performance and conversion by helping your ads attract more clicks for the same bid.

Ad Rank determines the extensions that are eligible to be displayed with your Ads and the cost-per-click (CPC). To clear Ad Rank thresholds and beat the ranking competitor, you need to bid the minimum amount necessary during each auction.

So, if your Ad Rank gets you the top spot on the SERPs (search engine results pages) with location extensions and call buttons, you’ll bid the minimum amount so that your ad can be displayed with these extensions.

The Ad extensions will only show when you have a high Ad Rank. Sometimes for your ad extensions to show, you may have to increase bids or improve ad quality scores.

Two Major Factor Impacted by Google Ads extension:

1.     The Impact of CPC on Google Ads extensions?

The higher your Ad Rank, the more valuable and prominent it is. This rank status means higher ad ranking positions have a higher CPC.  Although, you’ll not have to bid past your maximum CPC, except if it’s an automated bidding process.

Google Ad extensions are cost-effective and efficient methods to get more clicks and customers than bidding higher for a top spot.

The CTR, relevance, and prominence of your Ads with extensions are considered to know your Ad Rank. As your ad prominence increases, the higher your Ad Rank will be due to user interaction caused by the extensions in your ad.

This higher prominence can lead to a higher CPC. Google Ads made the auction for ranking ads such that the higher your ad (with extension) position, the higher your chances to get increased clicks and prominence.

Therefore, to get more clicks from your extension in a lower-ranking position, you have to increase your bid or ad quality to move up to a higher rank.

2.     Why are ad extensions as relevant and high quality as Google Ads?

Google Ads optimize Ad extensions to automatically display the best possible, highest performing, and most relevant combination (for ads and extensions) on every auction.

You can choose to enable Ad extension options that would be valuable to your customers and relevant to your business.

The Google Ads system will then decide its choice from among the extension options you choose, based on factors like past performance, search context, and available ad space.

Usually, optimizing your ad extensions doesn’t require much work since the Google Ads system auto-optimizes it for you. However, keep an eye out for your ad extensions and selection process.

What is Google Ads Location Extension?

Location Extensions are extensions to your text ads in Google Ads. They are prominent add-ons displayed at the bottom of an ad to make it easy for potential customers to find a local business address.

The Google Ads Location Extension supports every browsing interface. However, when users view the ad – that has the location extension – on a mobile phone, they will see a clickable link.

This link makes it easy for a user interested in your business to click and receive directions to your local store.

Location extension also increases your ad engagement by directing customers to your website to learn more about your products or services in just one click. Location extensions can include a call button for customers to call your company directly.

For instance, a clothing brand can increase its sales by creating a well-optimized shopping campaign to drive relevant traffic to your online store. Alternatively, this increase in sales can be encouraged by adding a location extension to bring customers directly to your store.

Here’s an example of using a location extension for a clothing brand ad:

Why is Google Ads Location Extension Important?

Location extensions are quite useful for local businesses that have physical locations. If you add these extensions to your ads, you can increase the number of customers that visit your physical store for purchase.

Continually having people patronize your store builds your brand prominence and credibility in your location as a well-known resource for the products/services you offer.

Ad extensions, as well as location extensions, are good deals for advertisers. This is because, in addition to boosting your ad performance, you don’t have to make any additional payment to enable them through your campaigns.

With location extensions, you can provide extra information about your business. This looks like snippets below your ads. Thus, making them stand out amidst competitors.

You, the advertiser, have total control over location targeting near specific business addresses.  Location extensions are shown on the Search and Display Network to bring interested users to your physical address.

Let’s assume a Jason fashion store wants to encourage their target audience online to come to their physical store to make purchases. To do this, the brand marketer will set up location extensions on their Display Ads.

Jason fashion store’s target audience sees these ads, checks out their opening hours, physical address, and other information. The visitors then click “Directions” on the map to navigate them to the physical store location.

Google Ads Location Extension in Display Ads

The location extension sometimes, just like the other ad extensions, may not show in your ads. This occurrence results in poor advertising performance if the goal is to get more customers to visit your physical location.

To resolve this inconvenience, Google made a new kind of ad – Location Extension Display Ads. These are the types of location extensions that display and automatically resize your location details to fit into ad spaces.

The Display Ads Location Extensions have a similar, direct display ad format. Automatically, you can resize them to fit various ad spaces. These ads sizes have different measurements 320 x 50, 300 x 250, 320 x 480, and 336 x 280.

When setting up your Location Extension in Display Ads:

• The headline of your ad should be 25 characters maximum.
• The description should have a maximum of 90 characters.
• Your business name should be 25 characters or less.
• Your theme color can be customized based on your preference.
• The maximum number of images allowed is 3.
• Your logo should be in ratio 1:1.

How to Add Google Ads Location Extension to Your Campaign

Step 1: Log in to your Google Ads account and select “campaigns” from the list of options in the screen’s left corner.

Step 2: Select the campaign to which you want to add a location extension.

Step 3: Go back to the list and click on “Ad Group.” Choose the ad group in which you want the location extension to be displayed.

Step 4: Go to “Ads & extensions” and click “extensions” from the drop-down. Click on the blue + sign.

Step 5: Select location extension from the list of options.

Step 6: Select “all synced locations” from the list under “select location source” on the screen’s left corner. On the right, you will see a preview of your ad with a location extension.

Make sure you fill in the relevant information about your business, such as your business name and local address.

Step 7: Now, click on “save.”

Google Ads Location extensions can display your business address on mobile and computers through Google Maps, the Search and Display Network.

Preview on Mobile:

Preview on Desktop:

How Google Ads Location Extensions are Displayed

Google Search Network: Here, location extensions on ads are displayed as location and phone number details. Although, a clickable “Call” button may be displayed on mobile instead of your phone number.

Google Maps: Your ad’s location extensions may be shown above, below, or beside search results on Google Maps.

Google Display Network: your ads with location extensions are displayed on sites and apps when users are in or near your local area or have shown interest in your business.

YouTube Video Ads: ads with location extensions are displayed on TrueView as in-stream, video discovery ads, and bumper ads to users who have shown interest in your business or are near your local area.

Wrap Up

Like the other extensions, Google Ads Location Extensions are cost-effective and conversion-driven features to get more customers for your business.

If your local business has a physical location, using location extensions in your campaigns will increase the number of customers visiting your physical store and, in that way, increasing your prominence in the area.

By using Google Ads Location Extensions, you not only increase website clicks, but you are also able to stand out among competitor ads. By using these extensions in your campaign, you’ll increase the likelihood of attracting more relevant customers to your product or services – and even better, to your physical store as well.