Defining Display and Destination URLs in Google Ads (AdWords)

A common question that often arises amongst AdWords advertisers is “what is the difference between Display and Destination URLs in the adverts?” This is a valid question and it’s important to understand how these work and how they should be used to maximise the performance of a paid search campaign.

The difference between the two types of URL shown in the Google Ads (AdWords) ads are as follows:

• the Display URL is the URL (coloured green) that appears below your ad text when your ad is shown in the search results. This URL is purely a visual identifier on the advert and doesn’t function as the link for the website.
• the Destination URL on the other hand, is the specific location within your site where you’d like to take a user that has clicked on your ad (the landing page). This may be a long URL and the Destination URL isn’t visible in the ad, so you can use it to direct people to a specific page within your site without cluttering your ad.

Google has guidelines and restrictions on how the Display and Destination URLs are used. The most important consideration is that the Display URL must show the same domain name as the website that the advert links to. The www. part of the domain doesn’t need to be included here, although Google will show this in the advert if space allows.

It’s important to use the Display URL as part of the marketing content of the advert, to indicate to searchers what they will find on the website and, where possible, to re-emphasise key terms in the advert text, which will appear bold and can help to increase clickthroughs from an advert (such as yourdomain.com.au/Search_Term).

Remember, the text used in the Display URL is not the actual URL link to the website and has no influence on the Destination URL used in the advert. This destination is set up as a link from the ad but hidden from the searcher until they click on the ad and see the website and the landing page URL in their browser. Therefore, in the above example, the Destination URL would be something like: http://www.yourdomain.com.au/category/product/item15.html.

For more information about the use of Display and Destination URLs, including best practice and Google policies, read this. Alternatively, please contact us now for more information.

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