AdWords Showing Extended Display URLs

Yesterday @RichardFergie asked on Twitter if anyone had seen 36 character display URLs as he had accidentally added a new ad that he thought would be disapproved, however, it had received impressions and was running (which is a bonus)…

Usually when you upload an ad with a display URL of over 35 characters (in Editor) you are shown a warning letting you know that you have entered a URL that is too long to be displayed and that to ensure that it meets the 35 character limit it will be truncated when shown. This is something I have been playing around with for a while and up until this week my URLs have usually been truncated (by dropping the www or the directory) to make sure they meet the 35 character limit.

After Richard’s question yesterday I revisited my ads and noticed that when they were being displayed fully which meant that the majority of my ads were showing with display URLs >35 characters. After adding a few more variations I soon found that I was able to get ads showing with URLs of up to 45 characters long, if they were any longer than this my URLs were shortened and the domain would only show. When I found that my ads were displaying normally I then decided to investigate further and find out if I was a one of (I wish) or if other people had been able to take advantage. You can see some of my findings below:

36 characters

38 characters

39 characters

41 characters

I’m not sure if this is a bug or if it is something new that Google is testing (it’s been a few days since anyone has seen a new ad test so they’re due one) but either way I think it’ll be interesting to see how a longer URL effects my CTR figures…