Every Google Ads Extension Explained (With Examples)

Extensions Are Now Assets: What Changed and Why It Matters

First, the naming housekeeping. In 2022 Google renamed ad extensions to assets, folding them into the same vocabulary as the headlines and descriptions inside your responsive search ads. Sitelink extensions became sitelink assets, callout extensions became callout assets, and so on. The interface now groups all of it under Assets in the left navigation. Nothing about how they work changed with the rename — but if you’re reading older guides or talking to Google support, know that extension and asset refer to the same thing. This guide uses the current term, with the old one in parentheses where it helps.

Why assets deserve your attention is simple real estate math. A bare search ad is a headline, a description, and a URL. An ad with a full complement of assets can also show four sitelinks, a row of callouts, a structured snippet, an image, a phone number, and your address — two to three times the pixels, at no extra cost per click. Bigger ads push competitors down the page and give searchers more reasons, and more places, to click.

There’s also an auction incentive. Ad Rank — the score that decides your position and your CPC — explicitly includes the expected impact of your assets and other ad formats. An advertiser with relevant, well-written assets can outrank a competitor bidding more, and pay less doing it. Google has long cited clickthrough lifts in the rough range of 10–15% when sitelinks are added to an ad; treat that as directional rather than a promise, but the direction is consistent: more relevant ad surface earns more clicks.

One mental model before the catalogue: Google decides which assets to show in each auction. You don’t control the combination; you control the inventory. Your job is to stock every relevant asset type with strong material, then let the system assemble the ad.

Sitelink Assets: The Workhorse Everyone Underwrites

Sitelinks (formerly sitelink extensions) are additional links shown beneath your ad, each pointing to a different page on your site. They are the highest-impact asset type and the one most accounts half-finish. Each sitelink has a link text of up to 25 characters and two optional description lines of up to 35 characters each. Add at least four per campaign — Google typically needs a minimum of two eligible sitelinks to show any on desktop, and sitelinks with descriptions filled in can render in the larger two-line format. Leaving those lines empty is the most common sitelink mistake; you’re forfeiting the biggest version of the asset.

Good sitelinks answer the question what else might this searcher want. For a plumbing company: Emergency Service, Drain Cleaning, Water Heater Repair, About Our Team. For a SaaS product: Pricing, Book a Demo, Customer Reviews, Integrations. Pricing and reviews sitelinks consistently attract comparison-stage searchers, because that’s what they want next anyway.

Three writing rules. First, every sitelink must go to a distinct, relevant page — sending four sitelinks to the homepage with different labels violates policy and gets them disapproved. Second, write the link text like a button, not a sentence: lead with the noun or the verb a searcher is scanning for. Third, use the description lines to add specifics the headline couldn’t fit — Open 24/7, Licensed Gas Fitters — not to repeat the link text.

Finally, layer them. Sitelinks can be set at account, campaign, or ad group level, with the most specific level winning. Set broad ones at the account level, then override per campaign so a furnace-repair campaign shows furnace-relevant links rather than the generic set.

Callout Assets: 25 Characters of Pure Proof

Callouts (formerly callout extensions) are short, non-clickable snippets — up to 25 characters each — that appear as a row of selling points beneath your description. Because they don’t link anywhere, their only job is persuasion: trust signals, differentiators, and offer details that didn’t earn a headline slot.

The strongest callouts are specific and verifiable. Licensed & Insured. Free Estimates. Same-Day Service. Family Owned Since 1998. Price-Match Guarantee. No Contracts. The weakest are adjectives wearing a trench coat: Great Service, Trusted Experts, Quality Work. A useful test — if a competitor could paste your callout into their ad without lying, it isn’t differentiating you. If it contains a number, a credential, or a commitment you actually honour, it’s working.

Add at least four to six eligible callouts; Google needs a minimum of two to show any, and giving the system six to eight lets it rotate and pick the best performers for each query. Don’t duplicate content that already lives in your sitelinks or headlines — assets render together, and a searcher who reads Free Estimates three times in one ad notices the padding.

Callouts are also the easiest asset to schedule. Running an offer for the month? Add a callout with start and end dates and it retires itself. Open 24/7 only on weekends? Day-and-hour scheduling handles it. Because they take minutes to write and approve, callouts are the right place to keep the time-sensitive, frequently changing claims, leaving your headlines stable.

Structured Snippets: The List Asset Everyone Confuses With Callouts

Structured snippets (formerly structured snippet extensions) show a predefined header followed by a list of values — Services: Drain Cleaning, Leak Detection, Repiping, Fixture Installation. Like callouts they’re non-clickable text under your ad, which is why the two get confused, but the format is stricter: you must pick the header from Google’s fixed list — options include Services, Types, Brands, Courses, Destinations, Amenities, Styles, Models, and a handful of others — and the values must genuinely belong to that category.

That strictness is the point. Callouts answer why choose us; structured snippets answer what exactly do you offer. A searcher who types hvac company sees Services: Furnace Repair, AC Installation, Heat Pumps, Duct Cleaning and immediately knows their job is covered without clicking. That pre-qualification cuts wasted clicks from people you can’t serve and earns clicks from people you can.

Writing rules: each value can be up to 25 characters, you need a minimum of three values per header (four or more is better), and the values must be items in a list, not sentences or promotional claims. Free Quotes is a callout, not a service — promotional copy inside a snippet is a common disapproval reason. Keep values parallel in form: all nouns, no trailing punctuation.

Create snippets for two or three headers where they honestly fit — Services plus Brands is a natural pair for dealers and trades — and Google chooses per auction. And mind the overlap rule that governs all text assets: sitelinks name the pages a searcher can visit, snippets list what you sell, callouts state why you’re the right choice. When each asset type does its own job, the assembled ad reads like a well-organized storefront instead of an echo.

Image Assets: Search Ads Finally Get Pictures

Image assets (formerly image extensions) attach a photo to your search ad, shown as a thumbnail beside the text — most prominently on mobile, where the square image sits to the right of your headlines and is often the only visual element in the entire results column. For local services, products, and anything where seeing it sells it, this is the asset that most changes how your ad looks.

The technical requirements: upload square images at 1:1 (1200 × 1200 recommended, 300 × 300 minimum) and, where offered, landscape at 1.91:1 (1200 × 628 recommended). Square is mandatory; landscape is optional but expands where Google can render the asset. File quality matters because Google reviews every image against editorial policy — no text overlaid on the image, no logos as the image itself (logos have their own asset type), no collages, no blurry or heavily filtered shots, and the subject should sit near the centre since renders crop tight.

What to upload is a strategy question, not a stock-photo errand. The image that wins confirms the searcher’s intent at a glance: the actual product, the team in branded uniforms at a job site, the finished kitchen. Generic stock imagery tends to underperform because searchers read it as wallpaper — authentic, specific photos are the typical winners, though test in your own vertical rather than assume.

Upload several images per campaign — up to twenty are allowed — so the system can rotate and learn. Eligibility requires a clean policy history, and some sensitive verticals are restricted. The dynamic image option, which pulls images from your landing pages, is a reasonable fallback — but curated uploads keep the quality bar yours.

Call, Location, and Price Assets: The Local Lead-Gen Trio

Three asset types do disproportionate work for local and lead-driven businesses, and they deserve a section together.

Call assets (formerly call extensions) attach a phone number to your ad — on mobile, a tap-to-call button. For trades, clinics, and anyone whose best lead is a ringing phone, this can be the most valuable pixel in the ad. Two configuration details matter. Use a Google forwarding number so calls are tracked as conversions, with a sensible duration threshold — counting only calls over 60 seconds filters wrong numbers from real enquiries. And schedule the asset to your staffed hours; a tap-to-call button that rings through to voicemail converts your strongest clicks into your most frustrated prospects.

Location assets (formerly location extensions) display your address, a map link, and distance, pulled from a linked Google Business Profile rather than typed into Google Ads. The prerequisite work is therefore on the profile itself: verified listing, correct address and hours, the works. For storefronts these are non-negotiable — they make your search ads eligible to appear with directions and on Maps placements where near me intent lives.

Price assets (formerly price extensions) render a swipeable card row of services or products with a price and a link each — you need at least three items, up to eight, each with a 25-character header and description. They’re underused because advertisers fear publishing prices, but that fear is the feature: a searcher who clicks after seeing Furnace Tune-Up From $129 has pre-accepted your price band, and the ones who bounce on price were never going to buy. If your pricing is competitive or your market is full of quote-hiders, price assets qualify clicks before you pay for them.

Promotion, Lead Form, and Business Identity Assets

The remaining manual assets are situational, but each owns a moment.

Promotion assets (formerly promotion extensions) show an offer beneath your ad with a price-tag icon — a percentage or dollar discount, an optional occasion label like Black Friday, a promo code, and start and end dates. Scheduled and visually distinct, they’re the right vehicle for sales: you launch and retire offers without rewriting ads, and the tag icon draws the deal-hunting eye. The discipline is honesty — the landing page must show the promoted offer plainly, or you’ll pay for clicks from shoppers who feel baited.

Lead form assets attach a form directly to the ad, letting a searcher submit details without visiting your site. The pitch is friction removal; the trade-off is that lead quality typically runs lower than landing-page leads, and the submissions land in a Google download or CRM webhook you must wire up and answer quickly. Worth testing for high-volume lead gen with fast follow-up; skip it if nobody will call the leads within the hour.

Business name and business logo assets put your verified name and logo at the top of the ad, where they meaningfully improve brand recognition and make the ad resemble organic branding. They require advertiser verification, which every serious account should complete anyway.

App assets (formerly app extensions) add an install link below the ad. Useful for the few businesses where the app is the offer; clutter for everyone else — a good reminder that the goal is every relevant asset, not every available one.

Automated Assets: What Google Adds Without Asking

Alongside everything you create, Google generates automated assets on its own: dynamic sitelinks, dynamic callouts, dynamic structured snippets, seller ratings drawn from review aggregators, and automatically created text pulled from your landing pages. By default, many of them are simply on.

The case for leaving them on is that they fill gaps. If a campaign has no sitelinks, dynamic sitelinks are better than nothing, and seller ratings — the star row sourced from third-party review platforms once you cross volume and rating thresholds — can’t be created manually at all; automated is the only way to get them, and they’re worth having.

The case for supervision is that the machine writes with site-scraped indifference. Dynamic sitelinks can surface your careers page under a sales ad; auto-generated callouts can pull a phrase that reads wrong out of context; and regulated businesses — legal, medical, finance — can find unapproved phrasing attached to their ads. Manually created assets generally take precedence when eligible, so the fullest defence is stocking every asset type yourself: a complete manual inventory leaves the automation little room to improvise.

Where you need control, you have it, though Google doesn’t advertise the path: at account or campaign level, open the Assets section and find the automated assets settings under the three-dot menu, where individual automated asset types can be disabled. Review the asset report first — it includes the automated items — then turn off the specific types that misfire rather than the whole category. Auditing automated assets belongs on the same monthly checklist as search terms: it’s the part of your ad you didn’t write, which is exactly why it needs reading.

An Asset Strategy: Priorities, Minimums, and Reading the Reports

Here is the build order that fits almost every account. First tier, non-negotiable for everyone: four-plus sitelinks with both description lines filled, six-plus callouts, structured snippets under at least one honest header, and business name and logo via verification. Second tier, by business model: call and location assets for anyone local or phone-driven, image assets for anything visual, price assets if you’re willing to publish numbers. Third tier, situational: promotions when you run offers, lead forms when you can work the leads fast, app assets if the app matters. An afternoon covers the first tier for a small account, and it’s the highest-leverage afternoon available in most of them.

Set assets at the highest level where they’re truly universal and override below: account-level callouts like Licensed & Insured fit everything, campaign-level sitelinks should track the campaign’s theme, and an ad group rarely needs its own assets unless its intent diverges sharply.

Then read the results, with calibrated expectations. The asset report shows impressions, clicks, and CTR per asset, but a sitelink’s click count includes clicks anywhere on the ad it appeared with, not only on the link itself. Use the report comparatively — which assets Google chooses most, which correlate with stronger CTR — rather than as precise per-asset accounting. Replace the bottom performers quarterly, keep the winners, and resist rewriting everything at once, which destroys your ability to learn anything.

The meta-point runs through all of modern Google Ads: the auction increasingly assembles your ad for you, and accounts win by giving the machine better raw material than the competitor does. At SearchPod, an asset audit is the first stop in every account takeover, because it’s where the cheapest improvements in paid search still live — more ad, more proof, more clicks, for the same bid you were already paying.