Google AdWords Third-Party “Review Extensions” Start Rolling Out To All Accounts

In June, Google announced the beta release of Review Extensions which allow advertisers to append a quote of endorsement from a reputable publication in their AdWords ads. Today, these Review Extensions will begin to roll out to all AdWords accounts.

You should see the Review Extensions option under the Ad extensions tab in your account within the next few days. The blurb you include in your ads can be a paraphrased review or an exact quote from the publication. Review Extensions can take a few days to be approved.

Google recommends setting one Review Extension at the campaign level for greater flexibility and exposure. You can submit more than one review, but only the first one to be approved will run. Also, campaign level extensions are given higher priority than ad group level extensions, so they are reviewed more quickly.

The review should focus on your business as a whole instead of a specific product or service — in the same way the starred reviews for ecommerce merchants are seller reviews rather than individual product endorsements.

Google’s [Not Provided] At 87% Of Google Search Traffic To Major News Sites

If you’ve been hoping that the hypocrisy of Google hiding keyword referral data from natural search traffic but still sharing it with advertisers would get some attention from the mainstream press, this might help: New data from Parse.ly shows that 87 percent of all Google organic traffic to some of the biggest news sites on the web is now [not provided].

Parse.ly — which we’ve written about before — is a content optimization platform that’s used by the likes of Reuters, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, the Dallas Morning News, Mashable, The Next Web and others.

The company puts out a monthly authority report that aggregates data from billions of page views across “hundreds of top online news publishers,” and the latest report shows how fast [not provided] has grown over the past three months:

Parse.ly’s news clients were getting keywords on about half of their Google organic traffic at the start of July, but it’s rocketed up to 87 percent as of the end of September. (If you’re curious, we’re seeing an even higher percentage here on Search Engine Land.)

On the bright side, Parse.ly says these major news sites are only getting about 46 percent of their overall referral traffic from search, so they have the benefit of perhaps a more well-rounded profile of traffic sources than many non-media businesses.