What are sitelinks and callouts in Google Ads?

Sitelinks are extra links under your ad, each to a page on your site: a product range, your store hours, a contact page. Google shows up to 6 on a computer and up to 8 in a carousel on a phone. Link text is up to 25 characters, and each sitelink can carry two description lines.

Callouts are short lines of text that say what you offer, like “24/7 phone support” or “free gift wrapping.” Each is up to 25 characters, and up to 10 can show, depending on space.

Structured snippets are a header from Google’s fixed list and at least three values under it, such as “Types: Sofas, Armchairs, Ottomans.” The headers are Amenities, Brands, Courses, Degree programs, Destinations, Featured hotels, Insurance coverage, Models, Neighborhoods, Service catalog, Shows, Styles and Types. A computer shows up to two headers, a phone one.

They cost nothing to add, and they make the ad bigger. Google says assets like sitelinks give your ad “greater visibility and prominence on the search results page,” and it charges a click on a sitelink as it would a click on the headline. None of them is guaranteed to show: Google shows one when it predicts it will help the ad.

Google’s own advice for callouts comes down to two rules, each with its own example:

• Keep it short. Shorter text means more callouts fit: “Free shipping” rather than “We have free shipping.”
• Be specific. Give the reader something to decide on: “34 MPG max mileage” rather than “Great fuel economy.”

Put what’s true of the whole business at the account level (“24/7 phone support”) and what’s specific lower down (“20% off cameras” in the ad group that sells cameras). For sitelinks, keep the link text short so more of them show, point each at a page that matches its words, and fill in the descriptions. Two sitelinks with the same or similar text won’t show together.

1. 01In Google Ads, open Assets within the Campaigns menu. You land on the Associations view, with a row for each place an asset is added: the account, a campaign or an ad group.
2. 02Filter the asset type to Sitelink.
3. 03If a row is at the account level, every campaign has sitelinks. If none is, list the campaigns on the rows and compare them with your campaigns. A Search or Performance Max campaign that isn’t there has none of its own.
4. 04Do the same for Callout and Structured snippet.

Two things to know as you read it. Sitelinks from the account, the campaign and the ad group can serve together, but callouts and structured snippets can’t: one added at the ad group level stops the campaign’s and the account’s from serving in that ad group. And the ones Google writes for you, such as dynamic sitelinks, aren’t in this view. They’re under Account level automated assets, in the three-dot menu on the right of the table.

Start at the account level, so every campaign has them at once:

1. 01Open Assets within the Campaigns menu, press the plus button, and choose Sitelink.
2. 02In Add to, choose Account.
3. 03For each one, fill in the sitelink text, the two description lines and the page’s URL.
4. 04Add at least 6, which is what Google recommends, and save. They need at least 2 to show at all.

Callouts and structured snippets are added the same way: the plus button, then Callout or Structured snippet, and Account in Add to. For a snippet, pick a header and give it at least three values.

Then add specific ones where a campaign or ad group needs its own. Remember that a callout added to an ad group replaces the account’s callouts there, so repeat any account-wide lines you want kept.

Every week Goldbeater looks at each enabled Search and Performance Max campaign, and at the account, for sitelinks and callouts, and at Search campaigns for structured snippets. A campaign with none at the campaign or account level is a finding. Missing sitelinks are one finding; the other types a campaign lacks are named together in a second.

It drafts no change, because which pages to link and what to say about them is copy, and copy is yours. The finding says what to add and where.

What it doesn’t see. Goldbeater reads the campaign and the account, not the ad group. A campaign whose callouts are all on its ad groups is raised anyway; if that’s how you built it, ignore the finding. Google’s automatically created assets don’t count either, since they aren’t words you chose.

Do sitelinks cost extra? Adding them costs nothing. A click on a sitelink is charged the same as any other click on the ad.

Why isn’t my sitelink showing? Sitelinks need at least 2 to show. Two with the same or similar text won’t show together, and Google leaves them off when it predicts they won’t help the ad.