Google Ads and Organic Search Result Beta Testing

This page will provide regular updates on Google Ads and organic search beta testing activity. We will update you as we see new stuff!

Google GA4 Countdown clock (2nd May 2023)

Not a beta but a first for the digital team after a long bank holiday weekend. Google is very clear that the sunset of GA3 is set in stone. It will be interesting to see how this pans out nearer the date. With over 28.1 million websites using Google Analytics that a lot of work!

Google Ads Favicon / Logo Image Assets

We are seeing tests run across several of our Google Ads customer’s accounts allowing our PPC team to add an image to the assets section of your Google account. This is presented as a “favicon” alongside the ad URL ad copy.

The image addition is currently in beta and only available for mobile users. Google mentions that they will automatically scan your website and ad the images into assets. However, we have noticed that Google disapproves of logos composed of multiple layers.

Having carried out several searches for different services of mobile advertisers and agencies are either not aware of this functionality or haven’t been added to the beta trial.

Google Organic Search Beta – About This Site

Google has been testing a new feature by the side of website URLs within the Google organic results. This feature is called About This Site. You can view further information by selecting the vertical dots beside the URL.

You get shown basic information about the site when you click the link. Sometimes, we have also seen a preview of the website page (someone forgot to take a screenshot!). In most cases, it provides details of the site. How long its been in Google’s index and other source information?

More About This page links to another page with additional information about the source.

The additional functionality is exciting but will only be a realistic function on desktops/tablets. The screenshot of the site is helpful if you are looking for a company and you remember what their website looked like. The negative is that a preview could put off a customer even clicking on your organic link. This is undoubtedly going to impact on search position if this happens.

Google Ads Beta Testing

Enabling Automatically Created Assets for Your Search Campaigns

“Get more clicks on your responsive search ads by enabling automatically created assets for your Search campaigns.” Source Google

“Automatically created assets add headlines, descriptions, and other assets based on content from your landing page, domain, and ads. Automatically created assets will be used in combination with assets you provide and can lead to an increase in performance for your campaigns while saving you time.” Source Google

Note the word can. We have tested this with both positive and negative results. It’s not ideal if the business you are promoting has any form of regulatory controls on what is mentioned in ads. Also, it can take the assets from the landing page, other relevant web pages on the same domain as the landing pages, existing text ads in the same ad group and keywords in the same ad group.

Google Ads – Enable Automatically created assets

Google Ads – Assets Upgraded

When you go to the assets section, all current assets have been upgraded to enable new features and reduce the complexity of asset creation and management.

We will be updating this page regularly, so bookmark this page. If you see any beta testing, then please comment below.