Abbreviating Words In A Ppc Headline, can you do it Options

[SEMMatt]

Hello,

I'm writing a PPC headline and would like to know about abbreviating a word in the title instead of spelling it out completely.

For example; 'flr' instead of 'floor'...Reason is to save space in order to fit copy all on one line.

Is this a best practice problem?

[copywriter]

While abbreviations are acceptable to Google (for the most part), you'll want to be VERY sure that your meaning isn't lost to your readers. I don't know that I'd abbreviate floor with flr, personally. (Just my opinion.)

Are there other words you can shorten that might be more common? "&" instead of and or "svc" instead of service?

[Randy]

I'd be terribly careful with something like the example you've given.

Google probably won't complain about it much, but by the same token the abbreviation is likely to hurt your relevancy score in Adwords, assuming your search terms revolve around the word floor, flooring, etc.

The relevance score does also feed into your overall quality score for the ad or ad group. So you could end up getting your ad dinged. Doubly so if real people don't understand the abbreviation and it adversely affects your CTR.

The basic advice being that you need to maintain relevance all the way through the process with your adwords campaigns to get the best of what it has to offer. Your targeted search terms need to be relevant to your ad, which in turn needs to be relevant to the content on your landing page. Messing up any of the 3 step process can hurt your quality score. Sometimes enough to get your ad pulled; Sometimes just enough to have Google hit you with what I lovingly refer to as their AST (Adwords Stupid Tax) where your ad has basically no chance of showing up in a decent position unless and until you grossly overpay for each click.

[nethy]

With adwords my advice is always experiment.

- Google adheres to its editorial standards erratically. I have had ads disapproved for excess abbreviation (under mispelled words, If I recall correctly) If you're unsure, try & see. If it gets disapproved, move on.
- How searchers react to various ads can also be very unpredictable. The cost (time) of split testing (running to ads in rotation) is so low that it really makes very little sense to fret over copywritting too much. I don't invest much in theorising how customers will respond to this or that when I can just check & see.

Breaking with my own advice, I find that when I have persistent issues with character count, its usually a case of saying too much. Ads with more 'information' do not necessarily get a higher CTR. Try also hacking at the message you are putting out there, not just the wording.

And test