Social extensions let you share your +1′s between your AdWords campaign and your Google+ page. This means all +1's on your Page are eligible to serve as annotations on your ads, and all +1's on your ads can serve as annotations on your Page.

Here's an example of how this works,

Let's say George, the owner of Happy Burgers, creates a Page for Happy Burgers. He also creates a Happy Burgers AdWords campaign, and creates a social extension by linking his Page to the campaign. His ad campaign contains ads for Happy Burgers. When 32 people +1 this ad, Happy Burgers' Page will receives 32 new +1′s. Alternatively, were George to connect his AdWords campaign to his Page after the Page already had 32 +1's, all of his ads could now have these +1's as social annotations.

How Will Social Extensions Impact My Campaign Performance?

Social extensions can help to boost the performance of your AdWords campaigns in a couple of ways. Firstly, having +1′s serve as annotations on your Ads is going to help them stand out visually from the competition. This may catch the eye of potential searchers and results in a higher click through rate.

Social extensions can also make your listing appear more trustworthy. If you ad displays a high number of +1′s compared to the competition, it may appear that other searchers have endorsed this listing as "the best".

How to Add Social Extensions to Your AdWords Campaigns

To add social extensions to your existing AdWords campaigns the first step is to create and verify your Google+ business page. If you're wondering how to get started, have a read over some of our previous posts to learn how to set-up and optimize your Google+ Page.

Once your page is created you will need to verify the page.

Now that your page is active and verified, to add your Google+ page to an existing campaign follow these steps,

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.

2. Click the Campaigns tab and then the campaign you want to edit.

3. Click the Ad extensions tab.

4. Select View > Social Extensions from the drop-down menu above the extensions table.


5. To add: Click New extension to add a new Page URL for this campaign.

6. To edit: Click the pencil icon to edit the existing Page URL for your campaign.

7. To delete: Check the box next to the extension and click Delete above the table

For more information on social extensions you can check out Google's blog post and also the help centre in Google AdWords.