Anyone who uses Google AdWords experiences the frustration of working within such tight character constraints, especially the 25 character limit of the headline. And then there’s the 35 character limit on each of the two ad description lines. This article explores an alternative to AdWords where though you are restricted in number of characters, there’s more flexibility, and fifteen extra characters you can use for the title of your ad.
Aren’t you often frustrated by the rigid constraints Google AdWords imposes in the number of characters per line you can use in writing your listings?
The title or headline can have no more than 25 characters and the two lines of the ad body are limited to 35 characters each. And you cannot overrun either line with a word that is too long at the end.
It’s a challenge to write a good ad with so few characters. And unlike classified ads in newspapers, you cannot buy extra words at any price.
Just remember your AdWords listing not to make a sale, only to get someone to visit your site. You want to make someone think there’s something special on your web page.
Still… you wish you weren’t so restricted writing
your Google AdWords ad titles. Google has become the most well known search engine. “See what you can Google up on this” has become a common expression. And yet Google’s Alexa ranking is number two.
So who’s number one? It’s Yahoo, the most well known search engine in the early years of the Internet. And for some reason, it has managed to retain its number one position. Yahoo has been rediscovered among PPC advertisers.
Yahoo now operates much like Google where it spiders the web and automatically picks up, ranks and lists web sites according to popular search queries. Yahoo recently listed one of my pages on its top ten and I didn’t do anything at all in submitting to search engines.
Yahoo recently joined AT&T and anyone ordering their DSL service has the AT&T home page upon opening Internet Explorer.
Google places a 25 character limit on the ad headline. Here’s where Yahoo offers an advantage. Yahoo Sponsored Search ad titles are limited to 40 characters. That’s right, forty characters. Fifteen more characters than what Google AdWords allows.
Here are some ad titles you can’t put in Google AdWords:
- Build Your Own Online Cash Cow
- Affiliate Marketing Made Easy
- Set and Forget Selling System
- Get More Clickbank Affiliates
- The Best Forex Trading System
- Clickbooth Affiliate Network
- Blogging For Dollars Secret
- Be A Freelance Photographer
- Accept Credit Cards Online
- Forex Trading on Autopilot
- Professional Web Templates
Count the characters and you can see how easy it is to overrun Google’s limits by just one or two letters. Forty Characters? Yahoo allows the title of an ad to wrap onto the line below. Here are a couple examples:
1 Start Your Own Laser
Engraving Business
Engrave logos, images, pictures
on nearly anything! FREE samples.
www.epiloglaser.com
2 Spyware Remover – Free
Download
Scan & Destroy Spyware, Adware
& Malware Instantly. Free Download.
AntiSpywareBot.com
Like Google AdWords, you are limited to 70 characters for the body of your ad. However you can type your seventy characters continuously. You are not restricted to 35 characters per line. Just type one long sentence or two or three choppy sentences to stay within 70 characters.
The body text of Yahoo Sponsored Search listings can wrap across three lines. So a long word in the middle of your ad would not pose any problems.
Here’s an example: Accepting Credit Card for Small Business Accepts all credit cards, online payments. $0 set up merchant account.
www.csicard.com
Just do a search on Yahoo. You’ll see plenty more examples. Yahoo Search Marketing offers more advantages over AdWords. For one, the cost per click is much less for some competitive keywords. There are other advantages that are beyond the scope of this article.
Thu, Jan 15, 2009, by Francis Ardi
Marketing