• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 13, 2014

Microsoft will expand access to Sitelinks running mobile search engine campaigns across the Yahoo Bing Network (YBN), making it available within the coming weeks to all marketers in the U.S., up from 60% since December 2013.

The feature allows marketers to enter up to 10 Sitelink extensions per campaign. These extensions apply to each ad group, as well as ads in that campaign. The extensions need to work well with the ads and keywords in each of the campaigns in the ad groups. Microsoft suggests that marketers should keep them short, use them often, and include a call to action for each.

Sitelinks will soon launch in several European markets as well, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, per Eliot Li, principal program manager at Bing Ads.

Li does not provide details on the impact Sitelinks has had on campaigns, but research shows that using Sitelinks can have at least a "slight" positive impact on paid-search ad results. "Extensions provide an incremental lift in click-through rates, but it's not going to remedy boring copy," explains Larry Kim, WordStream founder. He says this is a modest increase, but does not double or triple your CTR rates -- so don't rely solely on Sitelinks.

In July 2013, WordStream paid-search strategist Jason Gannon ran a case study on Sitelinks at the ad group level, analyzing a shoe retailer in Canada focusing on "CTR, conversion rate (1-per click) and conversion rate (many-per-click) to see how upgraded sitelinks affected the account." He found it had a significant impact on clicks and conversions, which helped the retailer gain more conversions and a better return on investment. 

While the research was done on a desktop, it makes sense that Sitelinks would have more of a positive impact on on CTRs and conversions across smaller screens.

"Girl looking at phone" photo from Shutterstock.