The other day, one of our awesome QuirkStars stumbled across a VERY quirky (no pun intended) way to use AdWords sitelinks.
For those of you not in the know, sitelinks are used when you would like other services or products that are on your website to be listed underneath an ad. For example, if you are bidding on shoes, but you also offer leggings, shoelaces, hats or kids' accessories, you can list those underneath the ad displaying for shoes – or even promotions. It’s a really good way to enlighten your users to the spectrum of what you offer on your site – and get a few conversions from it without additional costs. It does work better on a branding level though. People may be aware of your brand, but not necessarily of everything that you offer.
The only thing is that you have to be in top position with a good quality score in order for your sitelinks to show.
What was the quirky discovery? Normally these sitelinks are all in text, but one clever little monkey has used Unicode wingdings to give the text links a more customised feel. See below:
Image Credit: GACP Program Group
Currently, the sitelinks don’t have any editorial restrictions, so we can use this. What makes it even better is that Google hasn’t caught on yet. EVEN better is that it’s as simple as copying the Unicode image and pasting into the text line of your sitelink.
However, if this strikes you as something you want to get your eager little hands on, I would urge you to try it ASAP – Google won’t let us get away with it for too long. Expect editorial restrictions coming to the platform soon.
It’s something original, clever and gives your ads (and therefore you) more personality and a more human element – something I’m sure users in some industries would absolutely jump on. If you feel you would benefit, do it, do it now.
UPDATE (30/07/2010): Unfortunately, Google has already implemented restrictions agaisnt Wingdings in the Sitelinks. Thanks to Manny for the link.
Also check out:
What makes the use of special characters within the sitelinks even more effective is that it's eye catching, drawing even more attention to your ads. CTR's tend to improve as well, well at least from my experience :)
Posted by Brett Pringle on 2010/07/29