This morning we noticed a change to the format of some of our clients’ AdWords ads. In many instances where ads are ranked in positions 1-3, the display URL domain is now appearing as part of the headline, separated by a vertical bar.

Here’s an example for Morphsuits:

In this example, the domain appears in addition to a description line that has been promoted to the headline. This is possible as long as the resulting headline does not exceed sixty-eight characters.

According to our contact at Google, this new feature is part of an ongoing process to improve CTR and visibility of ads with high positions, in recognition of strong Quality Scores and overall performance.

This can only be good news for advertisers with highly relevant and well-targeted campaigns, operating in increasingly competitive environments who are deserving of greater brand prominence and subsequent click volume.

Users are also likely to benefit from having improved visibility over the destination domain to which they will be taken, resulting with increased choice and a better overall search experience.

In a recent blog article, Google have said that this launch is global and affects all languages and countries.