Existing Dynamic Search Ad campaigns may be eligible to upgrade to Performance Max, bringing you additional inventory and formats to reach new customers. Advertisers who upgrade DSA campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of over 15% in conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per action (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS). Learn how to Upgrade Dynamic Search Ads to Performance Max (Beta).
Dynamic Search Ads are the easiest way to find customers searching on Google for precisely what you offer. Ideal for advertisers with a well-developed website or a large inventory, Dynamic Search Ads use your website content to target your ads and can help fill in the gaps of your keyword based campaigns. Dynamic Search Ad headlines and landing pages are also generated using content from your website, which keeps your ads relevant and saves you time. All you need to do is add a creative description. Without Dynamic Search Ads, even well-managed Google Ads accounts with many keywords can miss relevant searches, experience delays getting ads written for new products, or get out of sync with what's actually available on advertisers’ websites.
This article explains how Dynamic Search Ads work, and how they might benefit you. For instructions, go to Create a Dynamic Search Ad.
Benefits of using Dynamic Search Ads
- Saves time. No more mapping keywords, bids, and ad text to each product on your website. Plus, Dynamic Search Ads may help you advertise to new markets faster than other alternatives.
- Show relevant, dynamically generated headlines with your ads. When a customer's search is relevant to your product or service, Google Ads will dynamically generate an ad with a clear headline for the most relevant page on your site.
- Steer your ads. With Google AI, you can show ads based on your entire website, or specific categories or pages. Or, prevent your ads from showing for products that are temporarily out-of-stock.
- Capture additional traffic. Dynamic Search Ads can help you gain additional traffic and sales identifying new serving opportunities that you aren’t already targeting with keywords.
- Display URLs are based on your final URL domain. You no longer have to enter your display URL when creating a new ad. Instead, Google Ads will use the domain from your final URL and show it as your ad’s display URL. For example, if your ad's final URL is www.example.com/outdoor/hiking/shoes, the URL on your ad will appear as www.example.com.
How they show
When someone searches on Google with terms closely related to the titles and frequently used phrases on your website, Google Ads will use these titles and phrases to select a landing page from your website and generate a clear, relevant headline for your ad.
In this way, Dynamic Search Ads can quickly direct potential customers to what they want on your site.
You're responsible for the final text that appears in your ad, so keep this in mind when choosing which landing pages to target. The most important signal, among the many used to generate your ad’s headline is the HTML title of your page.
How targeting works
Dynamic Search Ads use content from the landing pages on your website to target your ads to searches. You can choose from a variety of targeting options to specify which landing pages that Dynamic Search Ads should use. You can target groups of URLs with targeting types such as URL_Contains or “Categories”, or target specific URLs with URL_Equals or Page Feeds. More details below:
URL_Equals: Targets individual URLs from your website. For example, if you’re new to Dynamic Search Ads and want to test it out, you can create a URL_Equals target for your website’s home page.
URL_Contains: Targets pages with URLs containing certain strings.
Categories: Google Ads-generated sets of landing pages from your website, organized by theme. You decide which sets of pages to target, how to group similar pages, and the level of detail. If you want to start using Dynamic Search Ads quickly, the “Landing pages from your standard ad groups” category targets all webpages that you’re currently running search ads against in your account. It makes it easy to increase traffic on the webpages that you’re already using as landing pages in existing ad groups and campaigns. Categories such as “Landing pages from your standard ad groups” are available only for domains for which Google Ads can generate categories.
Page feed: Upload a spreadsheet of URLs for the most focused controlled targeting. You can then target your entire feed or parts of it. For instance, you can label pages about "products with 4-star reviews" or "hotels with lots of availability” and target URLs with those labels only.
Learn more about Dynamic Search Ad targeting.
How headlines work
Dynamic Search Ads headlines are dynamically generated headlines that target relevant searches based on the user’s search and the text that's most relevant to your landing page or domain. When you submit your page, domain, website or product feed, Google web crawling technology will find text that can be used for headlines relevant to the page content, which can then drive more searches to your page.
To increase the effectiveness of your Dynamic Search Ads headlines, we recommend you adjust your website headlines and titles in this way:
- Follow Google standard creative editorial policy rules for the page title and headlines
- Have unique calls to action
- Keep the titles and headlines on your website limited to 60 or 90 characters
Best practices
On May 31, 2024, existing ad customizers for text ads, expanded text ads and Dynamic Search Ads will stop serving (after this date they will only be able to serve with their default value):
- Update your Search Ads: If you need ad customizers for Search ads, we recommend that you transition to responsive search ads and create ad customizers for responsive search ads before May 31, 2024.
- Check for default values: If your customizers have default values, your ads will continue to serve with those values after May 31, 2024.
- Dynamic Search Ads aren't recommended if your website changes rapidly—with, for instance, daily deals.
- Dynamic Search Ads work best for websites with well-written HTML page titles and clearly-written content. Page content is used to produce headlines for your creatives, and decide which queries are good matches for the page. Advertisers, especially of sensitive industries, must ensure that they have the right certifications and the right audience set.
- Dynamic Search Ads work best with well-optimized pages where Dynamic Search Ads can identify themes and terms on the webpage. Dynamic Search Ads doesn’t work well with websites that are in a format that Google Ads can’t do this for (for example, sites that contain mostly Flash content or images, or sites that require users to sign in to access the majority of the site's content).
- Dynamic Search Ads work best when you regularly check your search terms reports. You can also keep them optimized by using negative keywords. These steps can help you keep your ads on-topic and prevent unwanted pages from getting indexed. Learn how to Create exclusions for Dynamic Search Ads.
Before using Dynamic Search Ads, be sure to review Google Ads policies to make sure your ads comply with them (and any applicable laws).