Google Shopping continues to grow-up and clean-up with an announcement that they are retiring promotional text as an option for Product Listing Ads and will instead use automated extension for shopping ads.
Promotional text was an optional message that merchants used to highlight special information that applied to all of the products in an ad group.
This text was meant to be an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition and throw out nuggets like “Free Shipping Over $20.” The message had to be 45 characters or less and go through an AdWords review process.
Beginning at the end of September, Google will use existing information from the Merchant Center settings and data feed to automatically show free shipping and price drop information extensions.
The announcement says that Google “noticed many of you use promotion text to highlight special offers or free shipping.”
The Googler team may have be annoyed by having to approve the same-old two messages because each are now automatic extensions.
There are a few other shopping extensions beyond shipping and sales that can be used including:
- Merchant promotions – for discount and promo codes
- Product rating stars and reviews
- And Google Trusted Store certification.
