To add more links to your ads, you can create sitelinks. Sitelinks take people to specific pages on your site (for example, a specific product or shop hours). In this article, you’ll learn how sitelinks work and how to use them in eligible campaigns.
Benefits
- Update easily: Change link text and URLs whenever you want, keeping them up-to-date for sales and special offers. You don't need to make new ads or edit them to include sitelinks.
- Get detailed data about your clicks: Find out how many clicks occurred on your ad when sitelinks appeared. Break down the statistics by campaign, ad group or ad. Segment your statistics to view the number of clicks that occurred on the individual sitelink versus another part of the ad (for example, the headline, other sitelinks or another asset).
- Use conversion tracking for landing pages: Set up conversion tracking for the landing pages that people visit when they click the sitelinks below the ad. You should optimise your landing pages for 'light' conversion events (such as a website visit or an 'add to cart').
- Edit your sitelinks without losing data: Edit your sitelinks without resetting their performance statistics.
- Schedule with start and end dates: Specify the dates, days of week or times of day your sitelinks are eligible to show.
Before you begin
Sitelinks are compatible with Search campaigns and Video campaigns on YouTube and AdSense for Search. When setting up your sitelinks, keep these best practices in mind:
- Create sitelinks at the account level first: Adding account level sitelinks first can help you get to optimal sitelink coverage sooner but make sure that they’re relevant to all of your campaign and ad groups.
- Keep link text short: Short links mean that more links can show, so be sure to stay within limits. Sitelink text is limited to 25 characters in most languages, or 12 characters in double-width languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
- Create links that reflect your site: Check your website's navigation bars for easy sitelink ideas.
- Add descriptions: Descriptions for each link make your ad more helpful to people viewing your ad and are required for unlocking ad formats that are shown to increase your performance. Descriptions don’t reduce the number of links that can show.
- Make sure that dynamic sitelinks are enabled: Keeping dynamic sitelinks enabled gives the system more opportunities to show assets with your ads. These sitelinks are expected to improve your ad’s performance and may show alongside or instead of manually created sitelinks. You can pause or remove an individual asset that was automatically created if you don’t want it to show alongside your ads anymore.
How sitelinks work
You can add sitelinks at the 'account', 'campaign' or 'ad group' level. You specify the link text (what shows to people) and the URLs (the pages that they click to).
In some cases, Google might supplement your sitelinks with descriptions that you've provided about those pages. You can either add those details yourself when creating or editing sitelinks, or Google can automatically use information within your account related to individual sitelinks (for example, from various ads in your account). By showing additional information with your sitelinks, you can make your ads more relevant to potential customers.
Sitelinks created at higher levels of your account hierarchy are eligible to serve with sitelinks created at lower levels when they're predicted to improve your performance. For example, if you have sitelinks at the campaign and account level, your account level sitelinks will be eligible to serve alongside the sitelinks defined at the campaign-level.
Sitelink assets at the account, campaign or ad group level
- If you have any existing sitelink assets at the account level in your Google Ads account, they may appear in all eligible campaigns.
- Similarly, if you have any existing sitelink assets at the campaign level, they may appear in all eligible ad groups within that particular campaign.
- By default, an ad group uses the sitelink assets of the campaign and account that it's part of.
- Only sitelinks in a specific 'branch' of the account > campaign > ad group hierarchy can appear together. For example, sitelinks in one campaign will not appear in another campaign.
- If you don’t want a sitelink asset at the account level to appear in an eligible campaign, you can remove it from the account and add other sitelink assets that you prefer at the campaign or ad group level instead.
- Sitelinks defined at all levels within the same 'branch' of the account > campaign > ad group hierarchy are eligible to serve together.
- Sitelinks should be created at a level that makes sense for all subsequent portions of the account hierarchy.
- For example, if a sitelink applies to all ad groups in an entire account, the sitelink should be added at the account level.
- If a sitelink only applies to a subset of campaigns, it should be added to only the relevant campaigns.
- Google will choose the best sitelinks that will maximise your ad performance from the eligible pool of sitelinks.
Keep in mind that assets can be associated to any ad group or campaign, or to the entire account. This means that a single asset can have multiple associations.
Tip: To maximise performance, provide at least four sitelinks with descriptions for all your high-volume ad groups and campaigns.
Cost
Sitelinks may be billed differently based on your campaign type or the format and goal of your campaign. Review the details below to understand the costs associated with sitelinks and campaigns.
Search campaigns
Sitelinks are free to add – you’re only charged for clicks from people viewing your ad. The cost of a click on a sitelink equals the cost of a click on the headline in the same ad. In other words, you'll be charged the same amount no matter which link in the same ad (for example, the landing page or a sitelink) someone clicks. Sitelinks offer more opportunities for your customers to click on and within your ad, but you won’t be charged for more than two clicks per ad impression. However, if someone quickly clicks on more than one link while viewing an ad, this gets treated as a duplicate or invalid click click and you won't get charged.
Video campaigns
The campaign will be billed according to the campaign format and goal. For example, with a TrueView for Action campaign or Video action campaign, you’re charged on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis from people viewing your ad. You pay each time that your ad is shown 1,000 times. Adding sitelinks to your Video campaigns may decrease your cost-per-action (CPA).
How sitelinks appear
Sitelinks appear in a variety of ways, depending on the device, position and other factors. Sitelinks are compatible with Search campaigns and Video campaigns on YouTube.
Search campaigns
- Sitelinks appear in ads at the top and bottom of Google search results.
- You need at least two sitelinks (for desktop) and at least two sitelinks (for mobile) for the sitelinks to appear in the ad. The number of sitelinks that can appear are different depending on where people are served the ad:
- Desktop: Your ad can show up to six sitelinks. Sitelinks can appear one below the other or they may appear side-by-side and fill up one or two lines of your ad.
- Mobile: Your ad can show up to eight sitelinks. These sitelinks appear side by side on a single line in a carousel format. People can swipe left or right on the carousel to browse your various sitelinks. If your ad appears in the very top position, your sitelinks are eligible to show in a prominent row, with only one sitelink on each line.
Example: Sitelinks in a search ad (computer)
Video campaigns
- Sitelinks appear below eligible ads that play before, during or after another video on YouTube. Sitelinks only appear below eligible ads on mobile devices.
- You need at least two sitelinks for the sitelinks to appear in the ad.
- Your ad can show up to four sitelinks. People can browse and select the sitelinks while watching the ad.
- You can add sitelinks to unlisted videos.
Example: Sitelinks in a video ad on YouTube (mobile)
- Use unique sitelink text: Sitelink assets with same or similar text won’t serve together alongside an ad. If you have two sitelink assets with the same or similar text, only one of them will serve.
- Check the schedule: Make sure that your sitelink assets aren’t scheduled at different times from when the ads are scheduled.
- Add new sitelink assets: If your sitelink assets aren’t getting expected impressions, try adding new sitelink assets.
Instructions
Review the following set of instructions to add, edit, schedule or troubleshoot your sitelinks in Google Ads.
Add sitelink assets
To add sitelinks at the account, campaign or ad group level, take these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets from the drop-down menu.
- You should now find a table with all of your assets. Click the plus button
, then click Sitelink.
- From the 'Add to' dropdown menu, choose the level where you’d like to add the sitelink: 'Account', 'Campaign' or 'Ad group'.
- Under 'Asset', choose your asset.
- To create a new sitelink, select Create new.
- To use an existing sitelink, select Use existing and select the sitelinks that you’d like to add.
- Fill out the 'Sitelink text', 'Description line', and 'URL'.
- Note: Entering additional text about your link in the 'Description' fields is optional, but highly recommended. When you fill out both lines of description, your sitelink may be eligible to show with these details.
- Repeat step 6 as needed. Note that you can click Add sitelink to add additional sitelinks before your save.
- Click Save.
Tip: To maximise results, create at least four sitelinks at the account level and make sure that they’re relevant to all your campaigns and ad groups. You’ll also need at least two sitelinks on a mobile device.
Edit sitelink assets
To edit sitelinks at the account, campaign or ad group level, take these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets from the drop-down menu
- You will now find a table with all of your assets. Select Associations from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
- Select Sitelink from the list above the table toolbar.
- Click the pencil icon
next to the sitelink that you'd like to update. Click Edit.
- Make changes to the sitelink. Keep in mind that any changes you make are also applied to any ad group, campaign or account that shares this sitelink.
- Click Save.
next to the sitelink that you'd like to update. Click Edit.Schedule sitelink assets
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets from the drop-down menu
- You will now find a table with all of your assets. Select Associations from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
- Click the pencil icon
- Click Advanced options to open the dropdown menu.
- Set a start and end date to show your asset only during a specific timeframe.
- Under 'Asset scheduling', select the days and times you’d like your asset to show. Click Add Schedule to schedule additional days and times.
- Click Save.
Pause or remove sitelink assets
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets from the drop-down menu.
- You will now find a table with all of your assets. Select Associations from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
- To pause or remove multiple sitelink assets:
- Select the assets by clicking on the tick box.
- Click on Pause or Remove on the blue bar at the top.
- To pause or remove an individual asset:
- Select the individual asset in-line by clicking on the dropdown next to the coloured indicator.
- Select Pause or Remove.
- To pause or remove multiple sitelink assets:
Troubleshoot sitelink assets
Confirm appropriate sitelink asset level
Follow these steps to confirm your sitelink asset is associated at the appropriate level:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets from the drop-down menu.
- A table with all of your assets will appear. Select Association from the 'Table view' dropdown menu.
- View the level at which the sitelink is associated and click the pencil icon to edit the level as needed.
- To restore the default of using campaign-level sitelinks, remove your ad group level sitelinks. Tick the box to the left of the sitelink and click Remove in the blue bar. Your campaign-level sitelinks will return.
If you use many sitelinks, you can save yourself time by editing and uploading them in bulk. Follow the steps below to edit assets in bulk.
Remove sitelink assets
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click Campaigns on the page menu on the left, then click Assets.
- You'll now find a table with all of your assets. Select Associations from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
- Select Sitelink from the list above the table toolbar.
- Tick the boxes next to all of the sitelinks that you want to edit.
- Click Remove in the blue bar above the table.
- Click Apply.
