So, I finally found an example of enhanced sitelinks, and I’m kind of upset…
You see, I have had enhanced sitelinks disapproved in other accounts, with no description of why.
I did stumble across a line in one of the Google Docs that – “The link text for each link must be 35 characters or fewer in legacy campaigns and 25 characters or fewer in enhanced campaigns.”
So, I reduced the enhanced sitelinks characters for some of the disapproved one’s, and bam – They were back up and running. Yet, here I have a case where enhanced sitelinks with more than 25 characters per line are showing for enhanced campaigns.
So what is it? 35 or 25 characters?
Well, it took some help from from a group of folks on Google+ to figure it all out. What I figured out, was that first of all – We need to get our definitions right.
There are two parts to enhanced sitelinks – The link text, and the link description.
1. Link Text:
The link text is the “old” sitelink. With legacy campaigns you used to be able to have individual sitelink texts up to 35 characters. Now, enhanced sitelinks link texts are reduced to only a maximum of 25 characters. The language can be confusing, but in all enhanced campaigns all sitelink link texts can only be 25 characters. If any of your sitelinks (of any type) have been disapproved in enhanced campaigns, double-check your link text descriptions.
2. Sitelink Descriptions:
The sitelink description can be up to 35 characters per line of text – Just like a standard text ad. Initially my confusion over the definitions led me to believe that the description text was limited to only 25 characters per line of text. Oops. 🙂 Enhanced sitelinks have the exact same character restrictions per line as standard text ads – 25 character headline/link text, and two lines of description text 35 characters or less.
I do wish we had some better diagnostic tools for enhanced sitelinks, specifically more information about disapproval’s.
(It would also be awesome if we could get some AdWords Editor support for enhanced sitelinks as well!)
Each account may be different at this point, simply because the tool is so new. Some of these disapproval’s may just be more bugs in the system. For now, if a single enhanced sitelink is disapproved, consider just removing it from the campaign/adgroup. Double check the policies once again. Instead of trying to edit the disapproved enhanced sitelink, try creating a new one. Could there possibly be some issue with any of the other policies? Can you change it just enough to be certain that it will comply? If so, do that – For that individual enhanced sitelink ONLY!
Don’t make the same mistake I did of assuming that each and every account is going to have the same set of rules, as it applies to enhanced sitelinks. Or, enhanced call extensions for that matter! Don’t try to get ahead of anticipating future issues with enhanced sitelinks, at this point – Take it one step at a time, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 🙂
