About responsive search ads

Important

Starting 30 June 2022, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit expanded text ads.
Expanded text ads will continue to serve, and you'll still find reports on their performance going forward.
You'll still be able to pause and resume your expanded text ads, or remove them if needed.
We strongly encourage you to transition to responsive search ads.
Learn more about this change to expanded text ads

Responsive search ads let you create an ad that adapts to show more relevant messages to your customers. Enter multiple headlines and descriptions when creating a responsive search ad, and over time, Google Ads automatically tests different combinations and learns which combinations perform best. By adapting your ad’s content to more closely match potential customers’ search terms, responsive search ads may improve your campaign’s performance.

Tips

Assets can be shown in any order, so make sure that they make sense individually or in combinations, and don't violate our policies or local law.
It’s recommended to have one responsive search ad per ad group with at least 'Good' or 'Excellent' Ad Strength. There’s a limit of three enabled responsive search ads per ad group.
If you have text that should appear in every ad, you must add the text to either Headline position 1, Headline position 2 or Description position 1.
Check out the Search Automation technical guide to learn more about the signals Google uses, how queries match to keywords, how automation makes keyword matching more effective and what you can do to improve performance.
Learn more about creating effective Search ads

Google Ads Tutorials: About responsive search ads

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Benefits

Responsive search ads help you:

Create flexible ads that adapt to device widths, giving you more room to share your message with potential customers.
Save time by providing multiple headline and description options, allowing Google Ads to show the most relevant combinations to your customers.
Tailor your headlines and descriptions to your customers’ locations, regular locations or locations of interest.
Reach more potential customers with multiple headline and description options that give your ads the opportunity to compete in more auctions and match more queries.
Increase ad group performance by attracting more clicks and conversions that your existing text ads aren’t capturing because responsive search ads help you compete in more auctions.

How it works

The more headlines and descriptions that you enter, the more opportunities Google Ads has to serve ads that more closely match your potential customers’ search queries, which can improve your ad performance.

After you enter headlines and descriptions, Google Ads assembles the text into multiple ad combinations in a way that avoids redundancy. Unlike expanded text ads, you can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for a single responsive search ad.

Next, in any given ad, a maximum of three headlines and two descriptions will be selected to show in different combinations and orders. Part of your ad text may automatically appear in bold when it matches or closely matches a user's search query. Over time, Google Ads will test the most promising ad combinations, and learn which combinations are the most relevant for different queries.

Optimise your campaign as you create it

As you create your campaign, you may receive notifications based on your setting selections. These notifications may alert you of issues that can result in decreased performance or that may be significant enough to prevent you from publishing your campaign.

The campaign construction navigation menu that appears as you construct your campaign provides a holistic view of your construction progress and will call attention to notifications that you may want to address. Move between steps in the navigation menu to easily review and resolve potential issues with your targeting, bidding, budget or other campaign settings. Learn how to Set up your campaign for success.

Instructions

Create a responsive search ad

From the page menu on the left, click Ads and assets.
Click the plus button and select Responsive search ad.
Enter the final URL and display path text. As you type, a preview of your ad will appear to the right.
- Note: The preview shows potential ads built using your assets. Not all combinations are shown, and some shortening may occur in some formats.
Enter your headlines. You’ll need to enter a minimum of three headlines, but you can enter up to 15.
Enter your descriptions. You’ll need to enter a minimum of two descriptions, but you can enter up to four.
Click Save.

Tips for entering your headlines

Bear in mind that headlines and descriptions may appear in any order.
Try writing the first three headlines as if they’ll appear together in your ad.
Make sure that you include at least one of your keywords in your headlines, and create headlines that are relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting.
Focus on providing as many unique headlines as you can. More headlines give Google Ads more options to assemble your messages into relevant ads, which may increase performance.
- Try highlighting additional product or service benefits, a problem that you’re solving or delivery and returns information. Learn more about creating effective Search ads
- You can provide even more headlines by creating variations of the headlines that you’ve already entered. For example, try a different call to action.

Edit a responsive search ad

From the page menu on the left, click Ads and assets.
Click in the bar above the table of results to add a filter.
In the drop-down menu that appears, click Attributes then Ad type.
Tick the box next to 'Responsive search ad'.
In the table of results, hover over the ad that you wish to edit, then click the edit icon .
Select Edit.
Make your desired changes to the ad’s URL, final URL, headlines, descriptions or URL options.
Click Save.
Note: Removing or editing any headlines or descriptions can change the ads that are serving and may impact your performance.

Pin headlines and descriptions to specific positions

By default, when you create a responsive search ad, headlines and descriptions can appear in any order. You can control where individual headlines and descriptions appear in your ad by pinning headlines and descriptions to specific positions.

For example, if you need to show a disclaimer in every ad, you can write the disclaimer as a responsive search ad description, and pin it to Description position 1. This ensures that all ads shown to customers will include the disclaimer in the first part of the description.

Create or edit a responsive search ad (refer to the steps above).
To the right of any headline or description that you wish to pin, click the pin icon , then choose the position that you’d like to pin that headline or description to.
To pin any headline or description that’s unpinned, click the pin icon , then select the position that you’d like to show the headline or description in.
Click Save.
- Note: Removing or editing any headlines or descriptions can change the ads that are serving and may impact your performance.

Tips

Pinning one headline or description causes it to show only in that specific position, preventing other headlines or descriptions from showing in its place. Because pinning reduces the overall number of headlines or descriptions that can be matched to a potential customer's search, pinning isn't recommended for most advertisers and can affect ad strength.
Try pinning 2 or 3 headlines or descriptions to each position so that any of them can show in that position. This gives you more flexibility to find out which headlines or descriptions perform better.
- Example: If you pin the headline 'Official website' to Headline position 1, all ads will have 'Official website' as the first headline. However, if you pin a second headline, such as 'The official site', to Headline position 1, all ads will show either 'Official website' or 'The official site' as the first headline.
If you have headlines and/or descriptions pinned to all available positions, unpinned headlines and/or descriptions won’t show.
Headlines or descriptions pinned to Headline position 1, Headline position 2 or Description position 1 will always show. Content pinned to Headline position 3 and Description position 2 are not guaranteed to show in every ad. If you have text that should appear in every ad, then you must pin it to either Headline position 1, Headline position 2, or Description position 1.

Report on the performance of your responsive search ads

On the 'Ads and assets' page you can find the same performance metrics for each responsive search ad that are listed for your other text ads. The statistics table shows the totals for all of the ad combinations that were created using the headlines and descriptions that you entered for each responsive search ad.

From the page menu on the left, click Ads and assets.
Click in the bar above the table of results to add a filter.
In the drop-down menu that appears, click Attributes then Ad type.
Tick the box next to 'Responsive search ad'.
- Optional: To adjust the columns and data that appear in your report, click the columns icon and select Modify columns. Choose the columns that you’d like to appear in your report. Learn more about columns in your statistics table
Click Apply.
Click the download icon .
Select the format of the report (for example, .csv, .pdf).
- Optional: You can choose to open your report in the Report Editor, schedule the report or have it emailed to you. Learn more about saving and scheduling reports

You can also view the reporting for individual assets and the combination of assets.

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