Google Announces New AdWords Upgraded URLs Deadline: July 1st, 2015

Are you currently using Google AdWords? This past February, Google announced a new AdWords Upgraded URLs format, to allow advertisers to use more features and options for tracking parameters. Upgraded URL’s have been in beta for API users for several months and have now rolled out globally to all users in the web interface.

With this change, “the landing page URL and the tracking parameters that make up the destination URL will be treated separately. The separation means that making changes to your tracking won’t necessarily send your ads back into editorial review and ad history and stats remain with the ads,” stated Google. If you are currently using URL tracking in your accounts, a deadline of July 1st is quickly approaching to transition to upgraded URLs.

So, this is what you’ll need to know beginning on Wednesday, July 1st, 2015.

Google wants you to prepare for the following changes:

1. Destination URLs can no longer be edited or created. Any new URLs will need to be created using the new Upgraded URL fields.
2. Destination URLs will be automatically moved to the new final URL field for any ad groups in your account that do not contain cross-domain redirect URLS. In your AdWords account, you will receive an alert informing you of any remaining ad groups that were not upgraded.
3. Any ads with destination URLs that have not been updated to Upgraded URLs will stop serving in a few months. Google will let you know 30 days before your ads stop serving by email with an alert in your account.

If you have further questions or need a more detailed explanation of this upgrade, this week’s Google AdWords blog post will give you the answers you need, to help prepare for the transition.