See? Even for people like me that do this stuff day in and day out…there’s always something new.

Maybe this is really lame, but it’s why internet marketing keeps me like a kid on Christmas morning. It’s why, when my other friends bitch about grinding boring stuff out in their cubicles all day, I can still get out of bed and be appreciative that I work in such a cool industry. One that changes. For the better. I doubt if I worked for GM I’d feel quite so enthusiastic.

Anyway, Google is starting to show signs that yes, they are paying attention to AdWords again. It’s been pretty quiet on the AdWords front, aside from the introduction of quality scores four score and seven years ago…now, a new feather in the cap has emerged for “high quality” accounts.

If you’re like most people wanting to run AdWords, there’s so much you want to say in your ads. PPC forces you to get really concise about what you want to say in those wee lines of characters, which can be hard. If you have a few great deals going, you really only have enough space to call out one. That sucks, right? If you’re selling a  line of sock monkeys and more than one is one sale, communicating that in a teensy ad is tough.

AdWords has rolled out something to what they elusively deem as “high quality” accounts. It allows for extra text links if you’re in the oh-so-holy and oh-so-coveted first place, highlighted area at the top of a search results page. You get up to four extra links to go wherever you’d like on your site.

Apparently Priceline.com is one of these accounts. Here’s what it looks like in action:

Pretty neat-o, right?

You don’t get any kind of notification if you’re eligible for these babies, so you gotta check yourself. Here’s how:

1. Log into your account. (Sorry, I guess that’s redundant.)

2. Click on your “campaigns” tab.

3. There’s a little, easy-to-miss line there called “networks, devices and extensions.” Click on that sucker.

4. If you’re among the chosen to have this tool, you’ll see an “ad extension” option. When you click on that, there’s a very simple screen. I’d show you, but it has client info, so….no screenshot for you. You can see one posted by PPCHero.com here, though.

Note that you can name each link free-form, and then specify the destination URL.

There you have it.

Bonus tip: To see what traffic those additional links actually bring in, I will continue to beat you over the head on creating a Google Analytics campaign URL. Forming your links this way specifies them as their own special deal when you look at your referring traffic in Analytics. Create the link there and use that as the destination URL. Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with AdWords, but I don’t get the impression they’re breaking out reporting specific to these extra links, so….it’s up to you.

And if you’re not using Google Analytics, you need to contact me. Seriously, it’s time for an intervention.