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Sitelinks in ads let you show additional links to specific pages on your website and are an effective way to drive traffic to your business. Account level sitelinks started rolling out recently in the AdWords user interface.

The AdWords API already supports sitelinks at the account level across all versions without any changes. You can use the CustomerExtensionSettingService to read and mutate the existing extension type SitelinkFeedItem, or associate sitelinks via Feed services.

If you have any questions, please let us know on the forum.
 - Danial Klimkin, AdWords API Team.

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With the release of v201309, sitelink descriptions are out of beta and available to all users. Adding more information to your sitelinks can make your ads even more useful and significantly increase ad clickthrough rate. You can now use feed services to retrieve or modify two descriptive lines of text in each of your sitelinks.

If you are already retrieving feed mappings or sitelinks through the API, make sure your code can handle the new placeholder field IDs of 3 and 4. The new IDs may appear in responses from the FeedMappingService for sitelink feed mappings (mappings with placeholder type 1).

As an example of how to improve your sitelinks by using these fields, let's say you have a pizza shop with special offers that you want to display along with your sitelinks. In addition, you want to periodically update the special offers as the seasons change.

Before adding the new description fields, your sitelinks appear as follows.



You modify your feed attributes, feed items, and feed mapping to use the new field types, and now your sitelinks can show with helpful descriptions.



In the month of November you want to to change things up with modified descriptions under "Order Online Now" and "Deals In Your Area". All it takes is updating the feed items mapped to your Campaign or Ad Group, and voila!



Note that the description lines or the sitelinks themselves may not always appear in your Ads or the format that appears could vary.

To update your existing feeds to include these new fields, you'll need to make the following changes.

• Use the FeedService to add two new FeedAttributes to your feed
• Use the FeedItemService to set these new attribute values on your FeedItems
• Use the FeedMappingService to replace the existing FeedMapping with a new one that contains the existing FeedMapping's fields and the two new fields
• As your specials change over time, use the FeedItemService to update your FeedItems with the latest information

Refer to our Java code sample for more details.

Concerned about losing reporting stats on your ads when you make changes to your sitelink descriptions? Don't worry - as with other sitelink values, AdWords will retain stats when you update your feed items.

Not using feed services? Check out the following resources to get started.

• Guide for creating feed services
• Client libraries that support various feed services
• A complete code example to create a feed and map it to the sitelink extensions for a campaign
• The Placeholder Feed Item Report to gather statistics on your extensions

Still have questions? Please contact us on the AdWords API Forum or Google+ page.

- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team

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As previously announced, starting on September 23, 2013, call, app and sitelink extensions will automatically upgrade to their new formats. If you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to upgrade your extensions ahead of the September 23 deadline so you can take early advantage of the new features, accrue statistics on the upgraded extensions sooner, and ensure that your extensions continue to show.

Starting on the upgrade date, the following changes will take place:

• You won’t be able to use CampaignAdExtensionService.mutate to update your legacy extensions. 
• The 25 characters limit will take effect. Make sure you adjust your sitelink text to 25 characters or less so your extensions continue to show.

The use of CampaignAdExtensionService.get for legacy call, app and sitelink extensions, will be available through October 23. You can use it to consult and compare your legacy extensions data with their upgraded counterparts.

If you allow your legacy extensions be auto-upgraded, the system will do its best to detect and avoid creating duplicate extensions. We recommend that you check all your extensions after the upgrade is finished to ensure they’re configured as you’d like.

Resources
To learn more about managing upgraded extensions with the AdWords API, make sure to consult the Feed Services guide. For a code example on how to upgrade extensions on your own, look in the migration folder in all client libraries.

If you have questions or need help with the upgrade, please visit us on the developer forum or the G+ page.

 - David Torres, AdWords API Team

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We recently announced upgraded ad extensions that provide many new capabilities, including mobile-optimized settings, new scheduling features, and detailed reporting at the individual sitelink level. We’ll be helping all advertisers transition to these improved extensions over the coming months. Starting on September 23, 2013, the AdWords API will support only these upgraded extensions, including the 25-character sitelink limit, and we’ll begin automatically upgrading legacy extensions to the new format.

We recommend upgrading your extensions ahead of September 23, 2013 so you can take advantage of all the new features and customize specific settings. Most advertisers are upgrading their extensions as part of their overall upgrade to AdWords enhanced campaigns. To help make the process easy for you, we’ve put together a number of resources:

• The feed services can help you create and retrieve upgraded ad extensions
• Our upgrade guide as well as a complete code example in Java provide best practices 
• Our client libraries provide full support for various feed services and code examples that show how to use them
• The AdWords API Required Minimum Functionality document is updated with information about how feed services can be used to create and manage upgraded ad extensions

As you are upgrading, you can create upgraded ad extensions while still keeping legacy ad extensions in the same campaign; however, only the upgraded extensions will be served. Beginning on September 23, if a campaign only has legacy extensions, we will auto-upgrade them to the new format. If a campaign has both legacy and upgraded extensions, we will only serve the new format, and legacy extensions will be marked as deleted.

If you have questions or need help with the upgrade, please visit us on the developer forum, or at one of the upcoming GDL Office Hours.

 - Anash P. Oommen, AdWords API Team