The importance of a good display URL

Anyone familiar with PPC knows the general rules when it comes to the display URL – make it concise, make it relevant and where appropriate capitalise. Beyond these three considerations it’s unlikely that we really give the display URL that much thought.

However, it might just be worth thinking a little deeper about the display URL in future. A study conducted by research company, User Centric, recently used eye tracking technology to measure the time spent scanning the ads generated by twelve different search results and found that…

1.The ads above the search results perform better, i.e., get the most attention. No real surprise there, that’s why they cost more

2.This is the important one. For the ads above the search results, the display URL is very important. In fact, it gets the same amount of attention spent on it as the headline and way more than the main body of the ad.

3.Surprisingly, the best results were achieved when only the domain name was used, adding a supplementary keyword to the end of the stream appearing to reduce the CTR by 5%.

Basically, far from being an afterthought, the display URL needs to be considered as a key pary of the ad.

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2. Google Installs +1 Button on Display Ads for Desktop and Mobile Users
3. Google enforces 35 Character Display URL Limit
4. Display Ad Builder Advice (Part 2)
5. Google Set to Revolutionise Display Ad Marketing
6. Display Ad Builder Advice (Part 1)