In the past few months, Google has been busy making many updates to its Analytics features and ad copy formats. Most recently, I saw news that the search giant was extending its landing page preview tool to the search ads it serves in results. This is a huge development and certainly deserves more attention that it has received. Online retailers in particular should take note:
The relevancy of your search advertising landing pages is more important than ever.
It’s not enough anymore to use dynamic keyword insertion to mirror consumer search queries in ad copy and then direct them to a high-level category page within your site. Google’s landing page preview tool will show consumers that your selected product page does not offer them exactly what they are looking for and they will choose another online retailer to purchase from.
I searched for “little black dress” on Google to see if retailers were linking relevant landing pages to their search ads, and wasn’t surprised at the results: some retailers had relevant landing pages, but almost HALF the first-page ad results had irrelevant products in my landing page previews.
In the short term, it seems like Google has done online retailers a favor: the more accustomed consumers are to previewing content in ads and results, the less they will click on retailers’ irrelevant ads, which saves them potentially “conversionless” clicks. But, in the medium to long term, it’s likely that retailers who don’t start linking more relevant landing pages to their search ads will receive fewer click-throughs, resulting in decreased sales a profits from search advertising.
