Connect your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaigns

This week we introduced Google+ Pages, a new way to get closer to your customers online. At that time we announced that you’d be able to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns, so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, ads and search results -- get tallied together and appear as a single total. We’re happy to announce that starting today, and rolling out to all advertisers globally over the rest of the week, we’re making this functionality available with a new AdWords feature called Social Extensions.

With Social Extensions, consumers will be able to see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they are looking at an ad, a search result or your page. This means your +1’s will reach not only the 40+ million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day.

Currently (and for campaigns that don’t have Social Extensions enabled) your AdWords ads only show +1’s from people who have +1’d that ad’s landing page. This limits the likelihood that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who’s recommended it. By enabling Social Extensions on your ad campaigns you’re able to leverage all the +1’s your brand has received, whether it be on a search result, on your Google+ Page, your website or on your ads, making it more likely that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who has recommended it.

We believe that this has the potential to improve your overall ad performance. In fact, 71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions.* These additional recommendations may result in more conversions and deeper engagement with your business overall.

Not only have we enabled you to serve more personalized ads, but we’ve also added a new reporting segment that will help you better understand the impact that social annotations are having on your campaigns and ads. Starting today you can segment any campaign, adgroup, keyword or ad by a new +1 annotation segment.

This segment will breakout your performance metrics into three categories

• Impressions with personal annotations - (impressions where the viewer had a friend or contact who had +1’d your brand.)
• Impressions with basic annotations - (impressions that included an anonymous count of people who +1’d your brand)
• Impressions without any social annotations

Note that this segment works on all campaigns, even ones that don’t leverage the new Social Extension (since +1 annotations can come from a number of sources, and not simply Google+ Pages).

To enable Social Extensions on your AdWords campaigns simply click the Ad Extensions tab in your account and select Social Extensions from the drop down menu and choose new extension. You’ll be prompted to add your connected Google+ Page URL and click save.

You can link your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaign with Social Extensions. Social Extensions are available in the ad extensions tab in your AdWords account

To learn more about the AdWords Social Extensions please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Crew

*Harris Interactive, June 2010