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No More Unicode Text Icons In Ad Sitelinks Extensions

March 11, 2011 • Article by Ed Culliford

It’s a sad week for us lovers of Unicode text icons… Google has banned all advertisers from decorating their ad sitelinks extensions with these pretty icons. I’ve included before and after screenshots just to help make things clearer, allowing you to easily identify the differences.

Since the beginning of the week we’ve noticed zero impressions across all our clients’ sitelinks even when they were previously capturing thousands of impressions every day, and statuses were still eligible. When queried with Google our response was the very typical “you’ve got to improve your quality score”.

Having already “improved our quality score” and not being content with the conclusion we took the initiative of removing the icons to see if our ad sitelinks would then start showing. And sure enough they did! We still can’t quite understand Google’s decision though. Surely by making our ads more appealing, we can capture more clicks, and Google can make even more money?

Anyway we think Unicode text icons are cool. What about you? Do you think this is this an illogical measure by Google? Let us know your comments below.